Thank you, Miss Connell

Helen Connell. She was a hoot.

She was one of our junior high math teachers. I never had her as a teacher, but I did have her in study hall.

Do they even have study halls anymore? I don’t see ‘em.

Anyhow, she wore way too much rouge on pasty, white cheeks and walked with a halting gait that bespoke her advanced age.

The kids talked bad about her behind her back, but not to her face.

She’d give ‘em a cuff on the ear.

One time I was in study hall. It was a warm day in June and I’d finished my homework and was daydreaming about what I’d do when I got out of school.

I was in one of those oh-so-delicious daydreams when I felt an excruciating pain in my head.

Miss Connell was lifting me out of my chair by my left ear.

If this ever happened to you, you’ll know that you will follow that ear. You don’t even have to think about it.

I suppose in Florida I could’ve shot her and later said I feared for my life and grave bodily harm, but that’s a different column.

In fact, what I did do was say I’m sorry for dozing in study hall and it won’t happen again. And it didn’t.

And certainly no one called my mom to tell her “an assault” had occurred. If they had she would’ve given me a couple of whacks with the “wooden spoon.”

It was easy to hold your hand out for the first whack. Not so easy for the second.

Anyways, many of my junior high comrades had been picked up by the ear by Miss Connell. Unfortunately they never told me that till after it had happened to me.

Later when I was an English teacher in the 1980s in Vermont and Virginia, teachers were advised to, in certain cases, touch students who were misbehaving. A light, but firm touch to the shoulder and a quiet word of caution was recommended in getting the focus of youngsters prone to act out and disturb a class.

It was a device I never used, but watching other teachers it appeared to work.

In Virginia where I taught, high school boys given after-school office detention had a choice: sit at a desk in a hot, stuffy classroom an hour and a half with your hands folded, or take one good whack on the backside.

The whacks were delivered by wooden paddle by the vice principal, who probably had taken a course in such and knew precisely how to administer said thrashing.

The students invariably chose the whack. High school girls were not given the option. They had to sit for the hour and a half. Sexism rears its ugly head again, so to speak.

One time when I was pledging a fraternity I got a whack as part of my pledgeship hazing. I bent over and remember hearing one of my frat “brothers” saying, “Make sure you don’t hit him too high, you could paralyze the poor bastard.”

A half-second later I saw stars and my bottom felt real hot. But it didn’t hurt too bad. Afterward, they slapped me on the back and bought me a Mountain Dew.

That was supposed to be another column, but it’s hot out and I forgot.

Anyway, folks my age, some of us, got a whack from teachers a few times growing up. I don’t think it hurt us too much. 

All those teachers that did that would have been fired and have a parole officer if they were teaching today.

Which makes me wonder, could a firm hand on the shoulder be considered “unprivileged” contact?

I’m guessing yes. Not even gonna google it.

Today, a teacher touching a student takes his job in his hands and puts his career at risk.

Young people reading this should seek out their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents and ask them how they were disciplined at home and school while growing up.

Then ask them how did they manage to grow up to be responsible and successful parents and citizens and go to college and be able to build this great country nonetheless.