I often think back to when I was at school. My fascination with corporal punishment was already well developed and I read everything I could find on the subject, but despite being at schools where it was used I didn't have the bottle to actually do anything to put my own posterior in danger. Except.... Except maybe once.
I guess I was about fourteen at the time. I had a legitimate reason to go into the school on a Saturday expecting to meet up with others, but when I arrived I found they were just going for the afternoon and I had thought it was meant to be all day. The school was deserted and unable to do what I'd gone for, I just wandered around to find something to occupy me. Which is how I came across the deputy headmaster's office with the door wide open and a sign attached asking the cleaners not to lock it. Now at that time, he was the only person in the school to give out official corporal punishment in the form of canings. I knew, from all my reading, that it was a legal requirement for schools to record corporal punishment in an official register, and the obvious place for our school to store the punishment book would be his office.
There were two issues - the school was so deathly quite that I should hear anyone approaching thanks to the wooden floors. On the other hand it was located in a bit of a dead end so it wouldn't be easy to get away without being heard. The possibility of seeing the punishment book and being able to read it was too great a temptation.
I just stood in there for a few moments - the first time I'd been in the room - and imagined the scene as errant pupils were caned just where I stood. The silence was reassuring and I began to search. No cupboards or drawers were locked so I ended up looking everywhere. I found the cane itself but never found the punishment book. If I had, I know I could not have been satisfied with just looking to see whose names were there, what they'd done and what they'd got. I would undoubtedly have stolen it. And what would the consequences have been then? I was tempted to steal the cane but just couldn't see how I was going to conceal it to take it anywhere.
