Paddling Doesn’t Scare Anyone

It was the fall of 1961. As I walked home from junior high school, the bully of the group finally pushed me too far and we fought. The vice principal, Mr. Hunt, happened to drive by and, to my relief, quickly had the two of us in his car and on the way back to his office at John Burroughs School in mid-city Los Angeles. Once inside his office I refused, in my best Bogart manner, to tell him the reason for the fight.

He presented me with the option that I knew would be offered. “You can have a couple of ‘good hot ones’ or two weeks of pick-up.” The “good hot ones” meant two swats on the thighs with his two-handed, 3-foot hardwood paddle. Two weeks of pick-up meant the humiliating experience of supervised litter collection on the school grounds. The choice was easy. Mr. Hunt smiled as he took out his instrument of choice and rapped it on his desk.

As instructed, I faced his closed office door, bent over and grabbed my ankles. Two swift and powerful swats about mid-thigh followed. The stinging in my legs was followed by a blow on the top of the head as the force of the swats drove me into the door, so I was rubbing my head as I rose. Just as I had been told by others who had been through the drill, as if on cue he smiled and said, “What’s the matter, does the wrong end hurt?”

The swats clearly demonstrated to me and my friends the impotence of the administrator. I knew he could never hit me hard enough to do any real harm. I was stronger and tougher than he and he had proven it by his own hand.

The second thought was how I would now be able to proudly display the welts on my thighs in the following day’s gym class. Mr. Hunt had done me a favor that would raise my prestige and stature. If I, as a middle-class boy, and my friends laughed at the paddling, you can be sure that today’s more violent juveniles will do so.

Forget the touchy-feely arguments against paddling. Enabling thoughtless, incompetent bullies to swat raging hormone-driven teenage males is simply not punishment and in fact is counter-productive. Make them clean walls and pick up papers.