Caned Junior

In Great Britain at least whenever two or more adults get together and start to talk about their schooldays it isn't long before the conversation turns to what happened to the boys and for that matter girls who were naughty.
In days of yawr when I, C* was at school an awful lot could and did happen if you were naughty or otherwise disrespectful in school because this was before the rules in State school started to change and being in school was very much like setting into the Fiefdom of your Head Teacher who pretty much had absolute authority over you in school time and as I also was for a period at boarding school beyond that even.
Like most boys from time to time I did get into trouble and it would get beyond something a classroom teacher might deal with with say a rule or slipper in front of the class.
You would be made to wait outside the Head Teachers office either standing or sitting as your peers would no doubt see you and knew perfectly well why and what you were doing there.
When I transferred up to Juniors was the point in which the way in which were were disciplined moved up a gear as junior boys were caned by the Head Teacher  so it was not so long that a boy in grey shorts, red v neck sweater, grey shirt and red and grey tie soon found himself in his office.

Junior boys unlike most girls after being scolded were always caned across your shorts (or trousers) and so it wasn't that long that I was introduced to the ritual of having bend over a table, chair or bend to ouch my toes to present my bottom for six of the best which was the mark of schoolboys of my generation.
Some might of thought your shorts provided you protection by a well swung cane over them tightly stretch doesn't as it leaves clear stinging lines that lasted ages and certainly made their presence known when you sat back down in class on your wooden hard chair, feeling very chastened for your caning.
I might add here unlike some other settings with adults my disabilities didn't exempt me so you might well ask what do I feel about  it.
My own feelings at the time were very much that I got the consequences I knew for my own actions because it was understood even by a disabled me and more over as I said in October my Junior Head Teacher believed in treating me like all the boys because he know disability wasn't my personality identity and that I knew right from wrong.
He knew boys like me needed firm guidance and discipline just the same if not more so because we could be and at times were spoiled and caning me helped my attitudes and behaviours in check.
Personally I feel caning did a lot of good for me and in general for boys of my generation because we soon learned to respect ourselves and our teachers allowing them to just get on with teaching most of the time from the get go and that authority they allowed us to learn efficiently, not losing time to lots of low level disruption.

A well read boy

Some hobbies or interests you may have reflect or may only of been possible in or possibly after a specific era such as following the "space race" or more recently using various forms of online social media that simply wasn't an option for this boy.

 Reading though not without it's difficulties such as being dyslexic and having a limited vocabulary was however on of mine not least for being portable plus able to paused and resumed at will which in that era advantages over tv and movies.
We were fortunate to have in upper juniors a male teacher with a passion for literature, Mr Rangecroft, who apart from having us read, also read aloud in class to us cos it was and still is the case reading is seen as more a girls thing which as a boy I can tell you isn't something you want to be associated with!
One book we loved to read was  Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner  a German author who wasn't very popular with the Nazi's which was set in pre-war Berlin where being raised by his Mother alone Emil is sent to Berlin to give to his Grandmother her salary but encounters a man, Max Grundles along the way who gives him chocolate that sends him a sleep and when Emil wakes up the man and his money has gone.
The story is his adventure with other sometimes shady children trying to track down the man and bring him before the police.
Another transitional book was Ian Serrillier The Silver Sword. It is the story a boy called Joseph in German occupied Poland who gets into serious trouble at the school after he turns on its back one of numerous pictures of the German Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler that gets him sent to a Prison Camp whe breaks out of.
The story is about his family and other children caught up in the war and brutal Nazi treatment of the Polish people.

I went for part of my childhood to a boarding school where of necessity all your relationships with teachers, care staff and class mates  are very different plus to a very large extent you're living by someones rules wearing a uniform all day with no chance of a change.

While there I read the Jennings series of book based upon the adventures  of two friends at prep boarding school called Jennings and Darbishire which made sense as  was in similar situation and we too had our adventures that seemed incomprehensible to those who were responsible for our welfare on the grounds. 

There remains a very large part of my that would enjoy a return to boarding school and I was fortunate to spend six months in a residential college where I could go back to being the boarding school kid with informal dorm parties and all the little intrigues. 
Although naturally we read sat at a table at school, the best position to read in  is that you are comfortable in allowing yourself to be swept away by the story which for me and countless other boys was and is on the floor with your shorts on the floor legs bent up proper boy style.   

Paused online boy

There's a couple of things I'd like to talk about during this week where actually I'm not right by this computer today thanks to the miracle of scheduling.

 

The first being during my childhood it wasn't until my mid teens that any kind of personal computer as compared to the big ones used in corporations and government really came into being.

The computers I had then included a Commodore 64 which I used for by modern standards basic word processing and games plus I did learn a bit about coding using basic.

A few years later they did come into schools as apart of a Education Department and BBC initiative where software and hardware was made specifically for schools where until the need for internet connectivity and the use of newer programs by the likes of Microsoft  in the 2000's they remained.

Fur most of that period I was in extended Boy Mode typically wearing shorts and grey boys socks too so this image wouldn't be too far off the mark for how I was presenting.

The other thing was it was that connectivity that lead me looking into the whole areas of age regression, people who do have a keen interest in their pasts such as school lives and uniforms that lead up to this blog.

Lonely in the crowd.

This week I'm continuing on with talking a bit about myself and part of what was and remains my special needs.

From a very early age I was the kind of boy who'd sit for some length of time pondering some idea or situation by myself not least because one thing about me is I never really know what was going one around me and if I had done the right thing because I'm a bit clueless like that.
I have social anxiety, have problems in making sense of what people say and do and it plays on this to the point I feel very much overwhelmed, I withdraw and this was really bad at my Junior School because other boys would just ignore me or worse still start bullying me cos I'm 'not getting it' but none of them wants to help explain this so at least I can try to fit in better.
That's the thing with me. You have to tell me things that other boys just 'see' and 'get' straight off the bat which to be fair most of my teachers do but no other grown up in my life seems to.