Except that’s not what actually happened.
The story is completely true – up to and including the dressing down from the headmistress. But we weren’t spanked, nor did we receive any other formal punishment.
Instead, Miss Howse and Mrs Roberts humiliated us in front of the rest of the class for days on end. Whenever we said or did something it was ‘here come the thumb-suckers’ or ‘that was one of the thumb-suckers’. As well as being very humiliating, these comments were irritating because they showed that the teachers hadn’t understood the game we were playing.
Surely a slippering of the kind I have described would have been better, more effective and less cruel than what actually happened?