I was 16 years old, late in my sophomore year of high school. It was the early 1990s. I went to a school that paddled fairly regularly – not at the drop of a hat, and only the vice-principal or principal could decide you had earned one, but it wasn’t super rare either.

Under normal circumstances, girls were actually paddled by a female gym teacher, boys usually by the vice-principal. This wasn’t an official rule though, just a general policy – one that I found out, painfully, wasn’t beyond being bent or broken if need be.

I was young, and felt very much like attracting the attention of as many young men as I could. On occasion, I took to not wearing a bra with shirts that definitely needed one. This was a definite violation of the school dress code, but I got away with it three or four times. Then one day…I didn’t.

I was sitting in my second to last period of the day when rather suddenly Mrs Jackson asked if I would please speak with her privately at her desk. She was either embarrassed to say it out loud, or trying not to embarrass me, but she apparently saw some, let’s say, jiggling as I had moved around.

Very quietly she told me she was pretty sure I was violating the dress code and that she was going to send me to the office. She wrote a quick note and I went on my way down. I knew there was a decent chance my ass was going to be paddled but I was hoping for detention – and crossing my fingers that my mom wouldn’t freak out when she found out. I had no idea just how bad my day was about to get…

At the office, I waited for probably ten minutes before Mr Washburn, the vice-principal, called me in. He asked me point-blank to my face: “Are you wearing appropriate underwear?” I just went ahead and told the truth – it saved both him and I the awkwardness of him getting a woman to check, I guess. He pointed out, correctly, that this was my third trip to the office that semester. He said that he saw ‘no recourse except corporal punishment’. Those were his exact words. Who talks like that?