Sqwertz wrote:
> What ass-backwards punishments were you subjected to by schools
> and other "authorities" back in the day?
I was in an orphanage where kids who wet the bed were forced to
wear diapers that were put on by women in the morning as everyone
including non bed wetters were forced to watch. Not often, saw it
only twice in the 5 years I was there they would send a kid to school
in a dress. I did not like that. I remember everyone laughing. But I
was not laughing at all. I am not saying that makes me a more
sensitive and caring person than those who laughed, it was more
a matter of being embarrassed by it as the school was shared by
non-orphanage kids from town, some of them girls.
Later at night sometimes we would be assembled to find an
offender standing on a box as we were told to sing, "The King
of France did it in his pants", before he was taken to another
room, the bathroom, where his private parts were scrubbed down
hard and heavy to make him cry with a toilet brush.
I would need an entire book to list the various punishments I've
seen and endured. In some odd way I'm glad about it. I was in
a reform school for a little over a year. The punishments there
were more severe but no more perverted than the ones at the
orphanage. At the orphanage they used a clothes lines tripled
up. At the reform school they used a baseball bat with its
fattest part shaved down flat. Just one of those was enough
to send me around the room howling before coming back for
number two or however many I was assigned. Friday night
was "Bendo Night" where everyone sat in a room outside the
"Bendo Room" where the "Bendo Bat" was used, waiting to be
called alphabetically.
One time at the orphanage - I was quite young - I remember
getting the strap for something, can't remember what - after
it was over I was walking up the steps and bumping into a
kid on his way down for his. "Did it hurt?" he asked. I told
him, "Nah, it was nothing", having already wiped away my
tears before passing him on the steps. After I got upstairs
I heard my name called from downstairs. I went down. They
said, "So it didn't hurt, eh? You didn't cry. Well, maybe this time
you will", as they administered the same punishment a second
time.
The stories are almost limitless. I try to find the humor in them.
And believe me there is humor in everything. I mean everything.