I felt the breeze before the brunt of the wooden ruler hit as it swished through the air before it came crashing down on my knuckles everyday every class from the age of 5….as my eyes watered and my hand throbbed …I thought what was my crime? Picking up the pencil in my left hand. I did not even realise it was my left hand because I got confused between my left and right hands. It was simply the hand I used to colour in and draw.
Almost just as Many times I got sent to the headmaster’s office for subordination.
As I sat there tears rolling down my cheeks I wondered why, was it so wrong to pick up a pencil in ‘that’ hand.
The excitement of going to school waned quickly as my knuckles and rear suffered on a daily basis.
Teachers would delighted in pointing out my ‘crime’ to the rest of the class. … Labelling me retarded etc., So much so to make me stand on the desk for the whole class to jeer at. Put in the naughty corner with face to the wall. I hated school. To say it was pure hell….is an understatement. To say I did not care would be to tell a porkies of massive proportions!
As the children from this school followed me into secondary and there the harassment and bulling continued. Again both adults and pupils. There was no escape even at summer schools.
Teachers and pupils constantly telling me I was nothing and would amount to nothing.
Imagine doing that to a child today? I know we really can’t place today’s values on yesterday’s actions…but school was a tough. Where were my parents to let the schools get away with this? Well I only had a mother and she would be likened to Cinderella step mother.
I was born in 1955 and started school just before my 5th birthday 1959 from the very first day I started so did this left handed punishment I told my mother she said I must have deserved it and smacked me again for talking back to her. I used to be terrified at school even to this day those days replay in my head whilst I am asleep I wake up sweating. On one of these occasions I was put outside the class room along came the head I ran into the toilets I was totally terrified - I came out when I thought he had gone only to have him grab me by the scruff of my neck and drag me to his office on this occasion I got the slipper can't remember how many times as I passed out. I was about 6 then some years down the track I told my Sunday school teacher - and he went to the school on my behalf and let rip. It did not solve anything just got more and more frequent. I would be shamed at every given opportunity I must have been the topic of conversation in the staff rooms I used to get constant detention and would have to sit and write I will behave in class etc., etc., about 100 times I will write with my right hand etc. only then to have the detention teacher tear it into little pieces in front of me as if whatever happened never happened. They would mark my work with big red circles wherever it was smudged which was in my early years basically everywhere.
I am now 63 and this is still very clear in my mind even though I try so hard to shut it out.
I would then arrive home late from school for my mother then to dish out her punishment smacked and sent to bed without any tea. Could not win no matter how I tried.
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LEFT HANDED IN THE 1960'S
