The Joys of Childhood

My old school in Hindustan, dear old St. X., had a variety of teachers whose practices which were, well, decidedly peculiar .
 
Mr. S., for example, used to make delinquents crouch down in the native-shitting pose (known in torture cells around Hindustan as the murga mudra), and then march around the cricket field in the Delhi summer.  There was the magnificent Mrs. M., who used to demand that all the lala-lets going to London for their vacations return bearing bras, since lingerie of the right proportions was evidently not available in India. 
 
And, of course, there was Nagin, the snake-woman, who used to unbutton the shirts of her favored wards and slip her hand up and down their hairless chests, all the while recounting the tale of Nadir Shah’s bloody and rapacious sack of Delhi in 1739 (during which he stole the Takht-e-Taus, the Peacock Throne, as well as the honor of many an old-city lali, which, given the low-life halwais they are forced to marry, was probably a source of much joy).
 
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I always imagined that things in Jesustan, with its concern for human rights and its faith in the innocence of childhood, would be different.  It is – different, that is.
 
Last month an elementary-school teacher in St. Petersburg, Florida, put her five-year-old wards to work counting jelly beans, as part of a math exercise.  One of her students started acting silly; the teacher responded by confiscating the child’s jelly beans.  Not unnaturally, the child protested: she drew on the walls, then threw books and boxes, kicked a teacher in the shins, smashed a candy dish, and finally hit the assistant principal in the stomach.
 
You go girl!
 
At this point, or well before it, Mrs. Martins (she of the vilayati bras and the magnificent, all-desi udders) would have responded by whipping out her trusty 12-inch (no you perverted freaks, I know what you’re thinking and she didn’t use one, at least not in the classroom) cane and whacked the bejesus out of the brat.  There would have been some yowls of agony, and that would have been that.  Mr. S. would have frog-marched the little fuck in the mid-day sun.  Nagin would have…  well, let’s not go down that road.
 
In Jesustan, they are civilized and do not do not engage in this kind of vile and violent behavior.  Instead, the staff of the Fairmont Park Elementary school called 911.  A police car arrived, and Florida’s finest promptly dealt with the situation.  Handcuffs were placed around the ankles of the child, and zip-tie plastic restraints around her wrists. [Parents of small children and sexual deviants are advised that that this maneuver must only be executed by highly-trained professionals].
 
You Don’t Go, Girl.
 
Now, the odd thing is that no one in Jesustan seems to think there is something a little, well, ahem, demented about a school and criminal justice system that handles five year olds in this way.  The child’s mother, in particular, seemed to believe that the whole problem was that the Fairmont Park elementary school had nothing better to do than conspire to put her brat behind bars.  “She’s never going back to that school”, Inda Akins said, “they set my baby up”.
 
Set her up?  There you have it; at least Jesustani parents stand by their children.  The day I had to have rabies shots after a savage dog bit me, my mother claimed I had probably done something to deserve it.  I was very irate, because she was right: I’d thrown a stone at the dog.