Life lessons

It wasn’t illegal when it happened, and with time the image of a middle-aged man running at my buttocks, armed with a 4-foot piece of bamboo as I clutched my ankles, certainly appears increasingly, disturbingly wrong. But that was the price I paid for keeping my trap shut.

It was 1987 and corporal punishment was still a thing in New Zealand schools, although sometime before graduation it had disappeared from the repertoire of disciplining techniques. But in hindsight I consider myself lucky to be able tell my kids how tough school was ‘back in the day’.

It did not matter that I was undeserving of such punishment. I had been accused of throwing sawdust in people’s faces which was not accurate. The fellow on the other side of my workbench had blown a handful of sawdust in my face when I had leaned down to examine my work and I was the one who had sawdust in my eyes. All I had done was return the favor by sprinkling a handful on his back when he wasn’t looking, which wasn’t nearly as bad as what he had done.

Mr Rodgers caught me in the act and deemed it a serious risk in the woodwork room and took it one step further and suggested I had been throwing it in people’s faces. When he asked me if there was anything more I’d like to say I had only moments to decide my fate.

I could lay the blame at my co-worker’s feet. He did deserve it and we were not friends and would eventually come to blows, but by the age of thirteen and only in my first year of high school, I knew that we weren’t supposed to tell aka ‘nark’ or ‘dob’ fellow pupils in.

I explained that I hadn’t thrown anything in anyone’s face but Mr Rodgers had made up his mind. Safety was paramount and I deserved six of the best.

Many teachers were infamous for their caning techniques but Mr Rodgers was known as the most vicious due to his years working with wood and metal. He had big calloused hands and biceps where the veins stood out like the body builders had, and could swing a cane harder than anyone else.

As if being struck by the strongest teacher at school wasn’t bad enough, he made me stand at one end of the corridor while he took a running leap at my butt.

I didn’t cry but the intensity of the pain does make your eyes water, but fortunately I didn’t have to receive the full six strokes as the cane broke on the third strike, which was just as well as I could feel a trickle of blood drip down my legs.

When I went back to class for a brief moment in time, I was deemed a hero. I had taken my punishment and kept my trap shut. I hadn’t spilled the words that would have condemned a fellow student to a public beating.

I could probably have left this opening story with the lesson being to simply - ‘Keep your trap shut’ - because we all know the power of words to pardon, condemn, or clear our name, but not so much the value in silence.

There is an art to knowing when to stay silent and when to speak out and I like to think that with time I have become more adept at making the correct judgement for the situation, although one of my favorite proverbs tells us that even a fool appears wise when he keeps his mouth shut.

If the above proverb is true, then I am a little less of a fool than I once was.

I hope you stay tuned because this lesson is the first of many I hope to bring to life through my personal experiences as a nurse, therapist, ski instructor and author.