I was going to write an entry about how, in retrospect, my High School was an astonishingly violent environment. However, I am conscious that my recent entries have not always been conducive to cheery smiles and happy countenances. So here instead is an account of a happy moment. However, I have to start with some violence.
Each teacher in my school had his or her own approach to discipline. I like to imagine that they spent their lunch breaks huddled together in the staff room – air unbreathable with cigarette fumes – arguing the point until their lips turned blue from oxygen deprivation and someone had to open a window. Some relied, hilariously, on our innate sense of fairplay and desire to learn. Others believed, equally naively, that humiliation was the key apparently failing to realise that their actions simply conferred hero status on their supposed “victims”. There was one teacher, however, with whom no-one was prepared to mess: Mr D.
Mr D wore spectacles with thick black frames from which his psychopath’s eyes would shine menacingly. He sported a black moustache and invariably had on a black corduroy jacket which was adorned, each day, with a fresh carnation. He had absorbed his lessons on discipline from the Mafia. All infringements, however minor, were dealt with by means of the instantaneous infliction of extreme pain. He had the job of overseeing the morning exodus from School Assembly and would select each day a victim at random who would be suspended in the air from the tuft of hair that grows immediately above a schoolboy’s ears. As the boy selected swung next to us, face red with pain, we would shuffle out mouthing prayers of thanks to the Lord that we had escaped for another day.
Mr D’s principal job was teaching Biology. He would stride around the classroom declaiming as we took dictation. His style of teaching was, putting matters as mildly as I decently can, idiosyncratic. For instance my recollection of his lesson on “human reproduction” has him beginning thus:
“Now, you loathsome little boys, no doubt you have all feverishly frotted your pathetic little members to the point of discharge. Now it is time to find out what they are actually for.”
One had the feeling in class that one was at his disciplinary mercy. As he toured the classroom he would carry with him a horse crop. From time to time, he would bring it down sharply on the desk in front you with a startling “thwap”. The key, we learned, was not to flinch as that would result in your fingers being caught by the crop and stinging for hours.
One afternoon I was sat in his classroom learning about chlorophyll and my mind wandered. I began to doodle on my rough book. I have always loved to draw and it takes real effort to stop myself covering any piece of paper left in front of me with squiggles. As I was putting my finishing touches to my latest work, I felt a horsecrop on my shoulder and Mr D bellowed into my ear: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING BOY?”. Mr D had a powerful voice. I once saw him shout so loudly at a first year student that had been tricked into sitting on Mr D’s BMW motorcycle by some evil older boys, that the boy appeared to be blown clean off the bike.
“ARE YOU DRAWING?!”
I had what lawyers call a “settled expectation of death”. I was hopelessly guilty and too scared even to imagine what he had in store for me.
“COME WITH ME!”
He set off for the small office that led from the classroom. As all the blood in my system had drained to my feet I could only shuffle past the rows of white faced classmates, their mouths hanging open. I caught the eye of a friend who winced sympathetically but his gaze made it clear that there was nothing he could do for me. I was dead already. That a man perfectly at ease concussing a boy with a steel ruler in the classrooom appeared to feel it necessary to take me into his office to punish me had to mean that whatever was in store for me shot clean off the top of the disciplinary scale.
I walked into his office and found him stood with his back to me removing a book from his well-stocked shelves.
 “So you like to draw?”
My mouth was completely dry. I could only nod. He turned to watch my head bob up and down.
“Sit down there”
What punishments could be inflicted while I was sitting? He put a book down in front of me.
“Do you know who John Constable is?”
“Er .. he painted the ‘Haywain'”
“Exactly. Good boy. This is a facsimile copy of his sketchbooks.”
I forced my eyes to focus and there it was: a beautifully bound copy of Constable’s sketchbooks. I noticed that the other 100 or so volumes on his shelves were all books devoted to great artists.
“I’ll leave you here to look through these while I go back and teach the rest of those soulless little morons about photosynthesis.”
He smiled at me and walked back out to calm the whispers and reassert control.
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Acknowledgment: This post arose as a result of having read Brother Lawrence’s excellent post on his gym teacher. Click on the “Snarky Franciscan” in my blogroll to read it.