Punishment & Reward

My contribution to Sunday scribblings #37 - Punishment & Reward

This topic has brought a little smile on my "monday-morning-blues" face. Now I have a good reason to relive my school memories yet again.

I was in my 9th grade when this incident took place. We had our morning break and waiting for the third session of the day to begin. Our Maths teacher was no where to be seen in the vicinity of our building. All of us were shouting and having fun. An important point to remember here is that ours was a complete girls batch. Finally, our Maths sir entered our classroom after 15 minutes. He was staring at all of us as though we had committed a big crime. "How dare you girls make such a loud noise in my class? Can't you see that the other classes have already begun?", he shouted at us. We were wondering what punishment he was planning to give us then as he is very fond of this brutal act. "Stand up on the bench", he gave a loud order. What on earth does he think of himself asking 14 year old girls to stand up on the bench? But none of us dared to protest against him. One by one, we started to step on top of our benches. When the whole class was standing, we couldn't stop laughing. It was a very funny sight to watch. This made our teacher to punish us even more.

He left the class in a second. We were feeling triumphant that the sir actually gave up on us. But little did our happiness lasted as the sir came back to our class with a long cane stick. "Is he going to beat us? Aren't we big girls now?", we looked at each other , wondering what's gonna happen. He asked everyone to turn our right hands and he started to hit them. Looking at the painful expression of the girl who got punished first, my face became pale. "Why did I decide to take the first row? Within a few minutes, he is going to be standing right in front of me and I'm going to be beaten. If I were in the last row, he would feel tired by the time he reaches me", my brain could already feel the pain. My turn finally came and all I could do was to cry with tears flowing down my cheeks like a stream. I don't know if my tears made any effect on him but when he did hit me, I felt very little pain.

Whenever I think of this incident, I cannot stop laughing. Those few tears are giving me moments of laughter forever.

Anyways, I hope the school kids of today don't get such brutal teachers.

There are many beautiful memories associated with reward. Let me see which memory strand I can take from my pensieve(Harry Potter fans know what a pensieve is!)

This event happened in my 6th grade. There was a quiz competition happening in my school auditorium for 8th and 9th grade classes. 6th and 7th grade class students were watching from the audience section. The quiz started and many questions were passed onto the audience as the participants couldn't answer them. I managed to answer most of the passed questions and I felt very thrilled. When the quiz finally got over, the awards ceremony began and the headmistress was giving out awards for the first, second and third winners from the participants. When we were about to disperse from the auditorium, the teacher who conducted the quiz said "We have a consolation prize for the girl who answered many questions from the audience. Anu from 6th standard gets this award". I didn't expect this at all as I was just happy giving spontaneous answers. I got a pack of Caramilk candies that I took home so proudly and shared them with my mom. I still remember the happiness that I saw in her eyes that evening.