I am new to this community, so I am not sure if this is still an active topic for comment, seeing the last one was over 2 months ago, but I congratulate Jenny on capturing so well the feelings and experience so many of our generation endured standing outside the headmistress or Headmaster's study, waiting to be called in for a caning.
As a male, believe me I felt no difference to how Jenny felt. Even with the solidarity of mates waiting with me, I was scared stiff, indeed frightened about what was going to be inflicted on my backside once I went through that door. I don't recall any boys crying during the waiting, but I most assuredly remember boys coming out crying, myself included.
Until you have taken six of the best (or four or three of the best for that matter) it is difficult to describe the pain in terms of any other painful experiences we may suffer in normal life. Jenny probably gets nearest to it in describing the moment the cane strikes your bottom as like being momentarily branded by red hot iron. Of course, as an adult, its perfectly possible to experience a caning, but essentially that will always be a voluntary experience. What made school canings much more fearsome was that they were involuntary - you had literally no way of avoiding the beating. But even though it was all involuntary, the will power required to obey the dreaded instruction to "Bend Over" without pleading or resisting is quite admirable, and as Jenny implies, however many times you may have been caned, the first stroke is so stunningly painful, the tribute to most schoolgirl and schoolboy bravery is the courage to remain bending over and take the subsequent strokes. As an adult, I am never less than amazed at my personal fortitude on the several times i received the school cane in the 1950s; a fortitude which seemed almost universal.
