I Used to Get the Cane At School

@NataliaT Natalia and Shirley. Congratulations both. You have captured the reality of what it was like getting a caning in the old days.

@NataliaT I can't even begin to imagine the thought of people seeing my bottom with cane stripes on it! Even getting to see others with them would be intense.

@MaryWat In truth I think only those that really had to go through such an experience can appreciate those emotions both Natalia have expressed. Clearly you did.

@shirleym56 Something I feel I missed out on.

@shirleym56 Very true. Forgive me if this seems pompous, but the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, when writing to friend who served with him in the American civil war, wrote " We have shared the incommunicable experience of war"

Those words INCOMMUNICABLE EXPERIENCE for me sum up how those of us who have been caned at school generally feel.

It's impossible in mere words to describe awful knowledge - however brief - that someone has decided to subject you to deliberate and premeditated pain, and the utter desolation you experience knowing that there is simple no escaping it. For me these moments, or minutes, or even hours knowing a caning is inevitable has 'incommunicable' effect on me, both emotional and physical.

It's easy to describe the simple shame of bending over to have your bottom punished, but utterly impossible to explain to someone who has not experienced it, the enforced willpower necessary to ensure that you took your punishment with some self control so that worse, unspoken consequences did not eventuate. The build up of pain has no words to describe it. Having an interest in school discipline for many many years, I have never actually found the right words to explain the whole gamut of emotions and feelings you go through getting a formal school caning.

Incommunicable.

@MaryWat Great description.

@MaryWat Incredible description!

@MaryWat I can well understand how incommunicable it must be.

Nevertheless, you (as well as @shirleym56 and @NataliaT) have made an excellent attempt at it. Thank you.

@TheThinker Just a minor afterthought on the challenge of communicating the reality of a school caning, and it is that the worst part of the experience - the pain itself - becomes an abstraction in recollection. You remember it was painful - excruciatingly painful - but that God you don't actually remember the pain as pain.

LOL A with like childbirth. You vow NEVER to go through it again, until the moment you hold the little thing in your arms! The pain, almost instantly, becomes an abstraction.

@MaryWat Funnily enough it's not the first time that I've heard that comparison made: that one cannot fully recall the pain of a caning in the same way as one cannot fully recall the pain of childbirth. Seems not uncommon amongst ladies who were caned at school (and who have given birth). :-)

That's not to say that your clarification wasn't appreciated! Thank you.

Sad that canes are now in the museum.

@Strictgram Not at all.
A 20 year old girl's from Germany I speak to now.

It's true not every cane is in a museum but it's a pity that any are!

LOL - a very evocative picture, bringing back some painful memories for people of my generation! The upper of those two canes is very reminiscent of the canes that were used in my school. Not that I was in a position to pay much attention at the time.

@Phoebe1990 Memories indeed! The thinner one looks like the junior cane used on 11 to 13 year old girls at my school. Possibly a bit longer than a school cane. The other one looks very much like the cane that I felt across my bottom when I was 14 and 17.

@Rebecca54 A shorter version, with a crook handle, of the thinner one is what I got across my bottom in junior school. The ones used in secondary school were like the thicker one - again with a crook handles

@Sharon I think the senior cane had a crook handle but I don't think the junior one did. I got the junior on on my palm at 12. That was my first caning as I was never caned in my junior school

@NataliaT @Rebecca54 @Sharon
Fascinating information, thank you. About what I'd expect but always nice to have one's suspicions confirmed. :-)

Perhaps I should post a few pictures of my own canes? All of them crook-handled...

@Rebecca54 The cane was quite rare in my junior school, only a very few of us got it. In secondary school, very few of my contemporaries escaped it completely.

@Sharon I expect about 50% of my contemporaries were caned. It would have been less had not 10 girls been involved in an issue on a field trip in the 3rd form. They all had to visit the headmistress in turn and bend over the chair for 2 whacks - the first time for most of them. I was not involved and only found out when some of them were showing off their marks the next day

@Rebecca54 Yes, that was exactly my experience too. A much thinner, darker cane, shorter and without a crook handle at Junior school - and usually (disgracefully) across the hand. Secondary school much longer and thicker, with a crook handle, but still remarkable flexible. And always applied to the bottom.