One year, might of been 1973, at our school a girl I loved kept not arriving for weeks on end and amongst our year group it was said the girl had been going through a rough patch with her folks as they were having difficulties.
It was the era when separation and divorced were just coming into their own having gone through a long period were people said they'd stayed together "for the sake of the children" so to some us this was a whole other world.
But anyway, each Assembly during this period we were instructed to look out for this girl during school time and report anything to our teacher or Headteacher as we'd been informed her parents had dropped her off but she wasn't making it into school.
For a long while nothing had happened and I felt genuinely worried something bad was happening with her (at the time next to no child knew about abductions, never mind adults using kids sexually as we didn't even know what sex was).
One day out of the blue she turned up having been walked into our classroom but within ten minutes, the Headmaster walked in and told her she was coming with him, returning later, appearing to struggle to sit comfortable in her grey skirt and obviously tearful.
When she came around to talking with me, it transpired she'd received one of most severest spankings across her knickers any girl there ever had.
At the time my thoughts around this were confused because to me at least it seemed we should of grateful she'd returned, was in one piece and was in need of love.
With the passing years however I understood though that in a sense she had to be spanked because she'd done something very silly putting herself at risk (not that she'd of know exactly what it was), she shown great disrespect to her parents, trying to keep her safe and that she'd broken the agreement to attend school, all of which had clear cut consequences.
I'm sure it was a lesson she learnt well.
No comments:
Post a Comment