In the U.S. public school district where I served my thirteen year sentence the teachers handled normal discipline of the students. You were only sent to the principal office if the offense was so bad you were going to be suspended or expelled (or at least threatened with these things). If you wound up in the principal's office your parents were probably going to be called. Since being dragged out of work or home to pick up an errant offspring was almost guaranteed to infuriate your parent to well past the boiling point, this was far worse than anything they could legally do to you in school.

Most of the teachers handled punishment right there in the classroom, but two teachers I encountered in my school career had a different view on this matter. Both male teachers, they apparently wanted as many people as possible to know you were in disgrace. These guys punished offenders in the hallway outside their classrooms.

One of my fourth grade teachers was Mr. Strand, a middle-aged, balding man. Everyone in fourth grade was afraid of Mr. Strand. Not very tall, he was still imposing enough to ten-year-olds. The main reason for the awe and fear in which Mr. Strand was held was his paddle. A standard wooden job, this paddle was wielded with great force. I found the pain especially surprising, since Mr. Strand was the first male teacher I ever had. (Of course I was used to my father, a very strong workman, beating my butt to a pulp at home. But at home I wasn't concerned with trying to maintain my composure while in the throes of agony.)

When someone (almost always a boy) upset Mr. Strand, the culprit's name was called, and he was marched out into the hall, followed by the paddle-armed tyrant. The pair moved a feet down the hall so that nobody in the classroom could view the operation in progress. Of course the door had been left open, so the victim's classmates (as well as virtually everyone in that wing of the school) could clearly hear everything.

The next sound heard was the dreaded, "Bend over." This was quickly followed by five or six slow, steady 'cracks' as the paddle repeatedly found its twin targets. Nor was this the only sound to be heard. Rare was the nine or ten-year-old boy who could take six hard swats from Mr. Strand's paddle without at least some outcry.

After they reentered the room and the door was closed, the sobbing miscreant followed Mr. Strand to the great man's desk where the final stage of the ritual was carried out. The boy had to sign his name on the paddle, then stand in the corner. The paddle was returned to its appointed place in the chalk tray of the blackboard at the side of the room. There it displayed the signatures of previous victims (some of them multiple times) and patiently awaited its inevitable return to action.

Fortunately I never had Mr. Ludlow for an actual class. I did have him as a study-hall monitor in seventh grade, but that was it. It was almost enough, as he just about ripped an ear off my head during one particular incident. The worst thing was I hadn't even done anything wrong (not that he knew about, anyway). In any event, on to the story.

I took typing in eight grade, and the typing room was just down the hall from Mr. Ludlow's homeroom. This turned out to be rather distracting, since Mr. Ludlow was in the habit of dealing with the malefactors from his seventh grade classes out in the hallway. My seat in the typing room allowed me to see his doorway and the area around it, affording me an excellent view of these beatings.

About once or twice a week (note I was only in typing class about three class periods a week) Mr. Ludlow would hustle one of his students out into the hall and make him bend over. Mr. Ludlow didn't use a wooden pointer like virtually every other teacher in the school. He had a flexible stick, which flexed like a cane (not that I knew what a cane was back then) but looked like a thin wooden dowel. I never saw the instrument close up, which was probably a very good thing (at least for my buttocks).

As the seventh grade lad slowly, very reluctantly bent over, Ludlow would flex the stick in his hands and cut the air with it. Taking a step back, he would lightly touch the stick to the boy's bottom. Then drawing back the weapon in a wide arc, he would bring it forward again with a mighty swing, the thin wooden rod slicing deeply into the tightly stretched trouser seat and the tender cheeks beneath. Jeans were outlawed by the school dress code, so boys only had winter-weight slacks (at best) and brief jockey shorts to shield their posteriors from Ludlow's flexible stick. Apparently the two layers of thin cloth weren't a sufficient shield, since nearly every boy I witnessed receiving these thrashings howled from the very first stroke.

Everyone in that wing of the building could clearly hear the slashing stick and the howling boy. These shows must have been entertaining to other nearby seventh graders, especially the ones who had Ludlow later in the day and could well end up bending over to serve as the special guest vocalist for the next performance. Three to six strokes was the norm for these punishments, and the young culprits always clutched and frantically rubbed their stinging, well roasted rumps as they hobbled back into the room under the implacable gaze of Mr. Ludlow. A few cried outright, right there in front of God, the girls, and everyone. Crying in such a situation was, for a 13-year-old boy, a humiliation that probably hurt worse than his aching backside.

After watching a few of these performances it occurred to me that almost having my ear torn off the previous year wasn't such a big deal after all. Although these distractions excited me, they did cost me something after all. I've always been a terrible typist.