The day I didn't cry

I've mentioned the cuts[^] before. A strap brought sharply down on the palm of the hand as punishment for some infraction of school rules. Always done in public with an eye to frightening the more timid scholars into obedience.

As previously noted, it hurts like hell. Naturally the ability to take 'six of the best' without tears was highly admired; some of my friends could take it with nary a tear. I, alas, usually couldn't and would return to my seat a snivelling shamefaced mess. You understand that breaking into tears during the cuts didn't usually result in jeers afterward from ones friends; we all knew what it was like. It was more an affront to ones own pride that one had cried.

One afternoon toward the end of 1964 we'd been smoking in the dunnies and some dobbing bastard informed on us. The teacher, Mrs Hodgson, conducted an inquiry. My name had been mentioned and I was paraded at the front of the class. I knew that I was in for six of the best. Unfortunately for me, my name was the only one that had been mentioned, along with the additional information that I hadn't been alone.

Thus began the interrogation. Probably a fairly gentle interrogation as such things go but an interrogation nonetheless. Not made any easier by the fact that my current sweetheart Julie was watching. Mrs Hodgson wanted the names of my accomplices. I wouldn't give them. We lived by our own code of conduct, one I'm sure I need not expatiate on. Out came the strap and the standard intimidation technique, a hard slam of the strap on a desk. Everyone jumped. I realise now that it was intimidation; I didn't then. Then came the hint that if I named names I'd be doing my 'duty' and need not be punished further.

Uh huh. Did she think I was born yesterday? Actually she may well have; as I've written before[^] she retired at the end of that year. She must have been 60 so a 10 year old would be extremely young.

Whichever way I jumped I was going to be punished; either with the strap there and then or later in the court of public opinion if I was so lacking in moral fibre as to dob my mates in. So I refused to name names.

With a heavy sigh she gave in to the inevitable. Sounds a bit like 'this hurts me more than it hurts you' doesn't it? Yet, looking back on that day, I'm less inclined to be cynical about it. She probably would have preferred not to have to strap me but we'd both backed ourselves into corners and the game had to be played out. And so I was strapped.

Norman Lindsay described it well in his novel 'Saturdee'. I can't find a decent link alas. He describes the moment when you feel the pain and catch your breath and survive, dignity intact, or miss the breath and break down (I'm probably misremembering the phrase but that's the gist of it). Luck was with me; I caught my breath and got through the six without a tear.

As I sat down at my desk, palms red hot, I felt triumph. I'd faced danger and stared it down.

And later, after school, as we enjoyed another smoke, I basked, for a moment, in their admiration.