When we got home I made a further examination, and to my horror I found four similar marks on her hips, I was so annoyed that I immediately sent for a doctor, who examined her and assured me that it was not serious, and the marks would leave in a short time. He questioned the girl, and she told us that recently a film book and novel had been smuggled into school by another girl, and that most of the girls got a look at them they were passed to her one day and she was caught reading them one night. The next morning the mistress sent for her and told her she would be punished if she did not tell where she got them. She refused to do this, and was then brought to her room, where two other teachers assisted in removing her knickers, putting her across the bed, and while they held her there, the mistress gave her twelve strokes of a strap on the hips. The other girl, who later admitted getting the books, received fourteen strokes of birch rods for the terrible crime. Is there no law in the country to prevent such brutality? It is not a matter that a girl will willingly report to her parents especially a girl of 17, and I think these schools should be exposed for such punishment, as I now understand that girls are spanked on the bare hips for the slightest offence against the school rules in this school. It is certain that my daughter will not return to that school, and if girls would only speak up, I am sure that something could be done to stop it for all time.ĭublin Evening Mail, 12 August 1937 Letters to the Editor "Spanking" The doctor told me that complaints of a similar kind were reported in the Evening Mail some time ago, and advised me to report the matter to the Board of Education. These readers know what I’m talking about.Sir - I have read the letter of "M.C." and I believe it to be true.
And it’s a valuable rite of passage, even when you’re screaming obscenities into a payphone like a complete moron.
It is 3-10 weeks of pure peer pressure, made from concentrate. You get to shed your overbearing parents and liberate the dipshit teen within. My oldest kid hasn’t gone to sleepaway camp yet for various reasons, and I have implored my wife to send her for at least one summer because (A) I want these kids out of the house, and (B) as one of my friends said about his kid at camp, “I know they’ll come back a different person than when they left.” Summer camp is an indelible experience for so many kids because it represents the first time they’re really, truly out on their own. Then again, I’m not sure why we did anything. I’m not quite sure why we ran from, you know, a phone call. And whenever a real person answered the phone, we would scream I’M A MOTHERFUCKER WITH A BUFFALO BUTT, hang up the phone, and then run away. So, at night, we snuck down to the phone and started dialing random 1-800 numbers, hoping to either get a live operator or a live girl at the other end of the line. I don’t remember playing any soccer whatsoever at that camp, but I very much DO remember the camp was at a boarding school, and that we got to stay in the dorms all week, and that the dorm had a pay phone that was the only phone in the whole joint. My most vivid memories of summer camp all feature me being a teenage shithead.