In communities like mine where everybody knows each other, certain families gained a reputation. The children from these families were very likely to be subjected to punishment far more than the rest of us even when we were all guilty of the same offence. When myself and old school friends reminisce we tend to remember them as always in trouble, but in fact they were not really any more badly behaved than ourselves but our misdemeanours were accepted as typical childish behaviour, theirs was not. A friend of mine, a rather troubled soul, showed me a couple of coffee cups she had in her bag, she explained having been caned that day she had nipped into the staff room pinched the cups and hide them. Her thinking was she may as well get whacked for actually doing something!

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