Fwd: EPISODE 876 DID YOU EVER GET THE STRAP IN SCHOOL? (remember ‘spare the rod and soil the child’

EPISODE 876   DID YOU EVER GET THE STRAP IN SCHOOL?

alan skeoch

sept/ 27. 2023’

When did the strap stop being used in schools in Toronto?

• By 1979, the York and North York School Boards had joined Toronto in banning the strap, but in the early 1980s it was still permitted in Scarborough, Etobicoke, East York, Peel, York Region, the Metropolitan Separate School Board, and virtually everywhere else in the province. Elsewhere in Canada, the tide turned towards abolition in the 1990s.
  
  
  THE STRAP
  
  
  I got the strap once.  At least I think I got the strap.   Was it my imagination or did it really happen?  I am not sure but have
  a clear memory of waiting in the principals’ office for him to deliver a whack on my hand with a leather strap that looked like 
  a thing dad used to sharpen his razor in days before Gillette Blue Blades made the razer strap obsolete,
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Memory
  “I sm sitting on a wood office chair outside the principal’s office in Runnymede pubic school . Toronto.  Nervous.
  Not exactly sure what I have done.  I was To be strapped though. Likely because I vaulted over the school fence in a kind of somersault.  Or maybe
  because I was late for school because it was garbage day and there were always good things to find like the
  western novel Frontier Doctor which was jammed in my back pocket
  
  
  “Well, son, stretch out your right hand.”
  “I’m left handed.”
  “Then stretch out your left hand.”
  (I should have shut up.)
  “I am going to hit you once wit this strap.  Do not move your hand.”
  (Good idea…I must move my hand.  Do not want to be hit.  Wait until
  strap coming downward…..then..”

Damn!

• “You moved your hand.  I hiT my own knee”
  
  
  My memory ends there.   I remember he was mad but do not remember
  him actually hitting me.  If he did then the blow was not memorable.   Hitting his
  own knee was memorable.  No laugh..no snicker…no tears.   
  Afraid he would double the punishment.  But he did not.  Did this really happen?
  My brain says i t did.   The same brain had said Santa Calus was not real years ago
  The same brain that told me to sit down most of the day..that way no-one would notice
  that the ass was torn out of my pats.  My back pocket had hooked on the fence
  and tore a gap revealing y underwear or my bare ass.

• Those were the days in late 1940’s and early 1950’s 
  when strapping kids was considered essential.  Belevers in the strap really believed that
  to “spare the rod was to spoil the child.”  A good whack on the hand was important somehow.
  Seemed a bit deranged to me.
   
  Our family did not believe in strapping.  My dad was a big tough tire builder. Strong 
  as an ox.  But he did not believe in disciplining Eric and me.  Never touched us
  He was prepared, however, to defend us from the dangers of the outside world.
  One illustration ?   A lady followed us home from school one day.   We were with our
  friends…big Red Stevenson Billy and Bobby Rankin, Brian Hetheirngton…and had
  been using pea shooters all the way home.  Especially this one woman’s dining
  room window which was in range. No ill will to her just  fired the beans because i was in range.

• The window glass got a shower of hard white beans
  rather than soft green peas.   
  
  
  So there she was.  Folowing us.  We lived closest to the school so got the visitor…the woman.
  Dad was working the night shift at Dunlop Tire.   He was home only because there
  were  no horses running at Dufferin track that day.   The doorbell rang and dad
  lumbered down to the main floor.  Opened the door….
  
  
  “Your boys have been firing white beans at my window!”
  “What the hell are you talking about?”
  “Your boys…”
  “Listen and listen closely  Get your goddamn self off my verandah
  and bugger off homel”
  “But…(splutter splutter)
  Dad closed  the door, lumbered back u the stairs, ignored Eric and me, and
  went to bed…night shift.   We had  a one bedroom house.  Eric and I slept there
  at night.   Dad did on night shifts but normally dad had the front-room couch
  mom the dining room couch   We were a close knit family.   Loved each other but
  never said so   Did not need to say that nor to get kissy assy with hugs.
  
  
  I never told dad about the strap.  Afraid he would go down to school and punch the shit out of
  the principal who already had a sore knee.
  
  
  When Marjorie and I had Kevin and Andrew we followed the same pattern
  but les dramatically.    Certainly no strapping.  Makes me shiver to even
  think of that.   The closest i ever sae to discipline was quietly saying:I was disappointed’
  to kevin or  Andrew for some minor indiscretion.  And the boy began to cry.  Maybe 
  words hurt more than a strap.  But I am not convinced.
  
  
  If you beilong to the ‘SPARE THE ROD OR SPOIL THE CHILD’ parental generation
  then Get the hell off our verandah
  
  
  alan skeoch