The day we felt God's wrath on Earth

When I was a kid, school started punctually at 7:30 a.m, and woe betided any student who was late. The duty prefect, sometimes the guy sitting next to your desk, would be there at the school gate with his black notebook.

Sorry, kaytee, it's my duty, he would explain despite my Oscar winning act, which had me alternating between an aggrieved angry glare at his betrayal or a silent pleading demeanour, one we used to term as ‘welfare face’.

Mercilessly, the bastard took the late arrival's name, many times poor me, which resulted in a detention after school hours for at least 60 minutes in the library, where one had to complete an additional punishment of 150 lines stating 'I shall always be punctual for school'.

After three detentions and 450 lines of a broken resolution, the head prefect would lead one to the abattoir, oops, I meant the Principal's Office where the stern old man would be waiting with his cane.

After the introductory phase of the encounter, a perfunctory pep-talk which he vomited out like a air nail gun without any discernable feelings or passion (he was saving this for later) while flexing the rattan in his hands a little too eagerly with, I suspected, anticipated relish, he asked the unfortunate victims to bend over at his desk and lashed out with all that he had. And only then did he show the passion he had been saving, for this painful moment.

Yes sir, if my Principal was noted for anything, it was that he never did things half-heartedly. And during those privileged occasions in his office I came to realise that there were several strange untidy scribbling on his desktop (the old fashion type that was pre Microsoft Windows), that many without my frequent victim’s card wouldn’t have noticed.

His strokes would fall unerringly hard on the poor student's buttocks with an acceleration, that many receipients believed, exceeded the escape velocity for ICBM and spacecraft. Sometimes the victim would receive 4 hefty strokes, but sometimes 6 or more, depending upon his Christian mood. Yes, poor kaytee went to a God-fearing Methodist institution – hallelujah!

The red swollen welts would remain noticeable (with pants down in the bathroom) for at least 3 to 4 days. Trust me, I know!

But ‘twas out of the goodness of my son’ly piety, and my sensitive nature I thought I would spare mum from any knowledge of the physical abuse against me.

Well, OK, I ‘fess up, ‘twas more than filial piety – indeed it was son’ly wisdom because if mum found out that I had been belted by my Principal for being late to school, she would have added another dozen or more. Those were the days when parents, especially Chinese ones, were on the side of teachers.

And worse, her targeting lacked the GPS guided precision of my meticulous methodical Methodist Principal. Hers were more like USAF carpet bombing, all over the show with inevitable collateral damage to various parts of my anatomy, with my buttocks probably the safest spot on my body. She would have won the admiration of Zatoichi in the way she wielded the birch at me.

OK, back to the abattoir - one smart Alec thought he would be clever, and inserted a thick exercise book down his pants prior to the death march to the executioner's office. The dull thud from the first stroke alerted the infuriated Principal. Well, we know what happened when a student tried to cheat the old man, don't we? I dare not even put down in print what occurred to that smartie cat! Ooooo!

The Principal sometimes dished out group punishment. Today we all know such punishments are unfair, illegal and actually counterproductive, as these would provoke more rebellious reaction because of the injustice to some innocent students.

A past example of draconian group punishment had been the Nazi punitive treatment of European partisans and Jews. A modern example of equally draconian group punishment has been the Israeli punitive treatment of wives, children and aged parents of Palestinian partisans.

But I am referring to bygone days when the teachers, especially the Principal, could do virtually any and everything to students at school without parents questioning them. Unfortunately for the students, especially naughty ones, parents and teachers were then on the same side.

There was a sweet RK (religious knowledge) teacher - I can't recall her name, but I remember she looked rather cute with her specs and sweet 'bugs bunny' teeth - who was trying her utmost best to teach our class a chapter from The True Teachings of Jesus Christ (by St Luke), referred by us as TTTOJC (pronounced ‘toe-jik’).

For crying loud and Jesus Christ (sorry but it was Scripture class afterall), she chose to do that at a time when all school exams were over and the end-of-year school holidays were just happily around the corner. She might have been a diligent Christian teacher but she sure had a lousy sense of priority! Naturally we were less than attentive, with some feisty students rather noisy and robust in their behaviour, to say the least.

Now I wasn't an angelic student - in fact I was a core member of my class wild group - except that day I was very quiet because I wasn't feeling all that well. We wild boys usually sat at the back of the class (to dominate the scene?). My best classmate Michael and I naturally sat side-by-side next to the last side door of the classroom, hmmm, so we could plot mischief more effectively, or more likely slipped out occasionally without even the teacher noticing, mind you, just for fresh air which growing teenagers required.

During that RK period Michael was also quiet like me, but only for the reason he was furiously composing a love letter to his new girlfriend. I was pretending to follow the lesson with my TTTOJC opened* on my desk but was actually about to doze off - thanks in no small part to Miss Bunny's droning as she talked about the cock crowing thrice before Simon otherwise known as Peter would do whatever.

* a lesson in tactics learnt at school that I subsequently found very useful in adult working life – who says schooling had no value!

The Principal, having been alerted to an unmitigated ruckus going on in the top class of our school, silently popped into our room via the door next to me. He stood beside my desk for a while, surveying the bedlam going on in the so-called premier class. Except for Kuaking KTemoc, everyone else was still unaware of his ominous presence.

I gave Michael a gentle kick on his foot to alert him. Michael stopped his love poem (or more probably, pleading), turned around and saw what he later joked as 'verily I say unto thee, Satan was standing there'.

The Principal decided that, save for one, our class including angelic M and innocent me, would get 3 of his mightiest on our behinds. Oh yes, the Olde Man did acknowledge that some of us weren't guilty but he wanted ALL of us to share the Methodist understanding of Christian discipline in class, especially when there was a lady teacher present, and a Scripture teacher at that.

The one exception was Peter who was handicapped. Oh no, Peter wasn't let off at all, definitely not when we had an equal opportunity Principal. Instead he gave Peter the nasty 3 on his palm.

Peter was handicapped in his legs but not his hands, which he employed rather skilfully from time to time to throw paper balls at his classmates while the teacher was writing on the blackboard. I don't know till today whether Peter was better or worse off than us in that group punishment.

For students of The True Teachings of Jesus Christ (don't forget, by St Luke), was it then better to give than to receive? That day, we believed most ardently Christ's advice.

Hitting the head with the knuckles or sakai in Penang Hokkien (from the Malay word sakal, meaning to knock up against or to use violence against), slapping, pinching, using the ruler to rap our knuckles or various sections of our anatomy, were normal punishments handed out by some teachers - some of these punishments were measured, some were very vicious.

Oh, did I mention that these were normal punishments? Yes, I did, so just imagine then what were abnormal or unusual!

That day we experienced the Old Testament promise of God’s wrathful vengeance in its most painful form in the person of God’s representative in our school, our dear God-fearing Principal.

He also had a love of frequently ordering a hapless student, whom he suspected wasn’t participating enthusiastically enough in the hymns during Friday chapel service, to go on stage to sing 'Onward Christian Soldier', solo and unaccompanied by the piano, in front of a thousand boys and some senior lady students. For some reason, all those poor bastards (I was one of them) somehow didn't turn out to be very brave Christian soldiers when on the stage.

However, many of my old classmates till today would still claim, over our glasses of beer that L, the first letter of the Principal’s surname, stood for Lucifer. Whenever we talked about Mr L, we would unconsciously but automatically stroke our behind at the same time, as if to commemorate the Day of God’s Wrath visited on our class.

No, I certainly wouldn’t argue against the belief of the Shining One baptising us into his Church of Pain.