It is only now I am a parent to two boys myself that some of the memories of my early life have come back into focus. This story is mainly true.
When I was eleven I began attending a private religous school. It was a day school but there were some boys, about 4 or 5 in each year whose parents lived overseas, mainly in the British armed forces, who lived in a boarding house on school grounds.
My friends had gone to other schools so on day one I walked into my new school in my new uniform of blazer, shirt, tie and long grey trousers. Like all the other new boys I was nerous and in that first week my class mates and I learned a lot.
Among the facts we learned were that prefects could give us lines or detention, masters could give us the same and the headmaster, a member of the religous order which owned the school, had a cane.
There were about ten boys in each of two classes in the first year.
I became friendly with Chris, who was a boarder and we sat next to each other in class. At break time you avoided the older boys and so we first years developed the usual friendships, feeling as if it were us against the rest of the school. Chris was a lot like me , except that his parents were stationed in the far east. His father was in the air force.
Chris was good at games (sport) and he and I were usually fastest at most events such as cross country. We were both popular.
Except for the greek master.
He was a member of the religous order and was Chris's housemaster. There were four new boys in the house and Chris told me that none of them liked the master. He was popular with parents though because he emphasised discipline and hard work in lessons and sport.
This master was the only one who brought a stick into the class. It was not a cane but a solid piece of wood about two feet long by about a third of an inch wide and half an inch thick. These days he would have been arrested for the things he did but this was the 60's.
At the start of each lesson we had to translate vocab. It was only one word and we did this in turn. The first boy would translate the greek word into english, the second boy the second word and so on in turn. If you got a word wrong or did not know it you had to stand up. If you got a second word wrong you were called to the front of the class. A desk at the front of the class, in the middle, was always kept free. You would have to bend over the edge of the desk facing your classmates. The master then put his stick on your bottom for a minute before whacking it down, usually no more than twice. You could see the other boys looking at you and the whack hurt so much that you had a pained expression on your face. Boys then had to return to their desk, usually rubbing their bottoms.
In the first two weeks I was hit once but I did't tell my parents. I guess the other boys didn't either because the master used to bring the stick to class every now and again in that first year.
Now I realise he had a sadistic streak and enjoyed the sitgh of us eleven year old boys bent across the desk with the fabric of our school trousers stretched across our young bottoms awaiting his stick. Of course back then we did not know what a sadist was or that an adult might enjoy inflicting a painful whack across our bottoms.
In lent term Chris came to stay at our house for a weekend. The master had given consent to my dad.
Chris and I shared my room. We talked late into the evening even though we had been told to go to sleep.
Chris told me that once, soon after we had joined the school, the master came to his dorm when he and the other three boys were in bed reading and told Chris to go to his sitting room. Nothing was said but when the master returned to his sitting room he told Chris to bend over his lap. Chris had his pyjama trousers pulled down and the master smacked him hard on his bare bottom. Chris told me that night that it was only when he began to cry that the master stopped slapping him.
After this I began to look at Chris' bottom in class, admiring the firmness of his small buttocks under his grey trousers, espcially when he bent down for any reason and you could see the outline of his underpants, and also in the shower after games, imagining him being smacked. I never saw any marks though. Chris and I became best friends and when he came to stay with me at my house for two weeks the following summer we played greek master and naughty schoolboy. The boy always ended up with his underwear off receiving a whacking with any household implement we could fine for the purpose.
That's another story though.