Forever Young

When was the last time you opened your twenty-year-old, forty-year-old, or sixty-year-old high school yearbook? After you fought through the cobwebs, what did you behold between those faded, moldering covers? In my school, the first page of the yearbook always bore a dedication to some venerable, long-tenured teacher. In my class’s case, that teacher was scheduled to be Mrs. Fern Christman. This was the woman who taught us social studies in junior high school. She was stout and buxom and had a habit of mopping her brow with a hanky she kept hidden deep in her prodigious bosom. It was always high comedy when Mrs. Christman went in search of her hanky. I suppose she was middle-aged, but we all considered her old. She ruled imperiously with an unwavering hand and a hawk-eyed stare. I never saw her smile.

In those days, teachers were allowed to whack you with a paddle if you misbehaved. What constituted misbehavior was not open for discussion and was entirely at the discretion of the paddle-wielder. I once personally faced the paddle because of a snowball fight at recess. My cohorts and I were lined up in front of the classroom with our backsides to the class and told to bend over and hold our ankles. Mrs. Christman then administered our punishment, which consisted of three hard whacks to our posteriors. The instrument of application was a flat piece of wood with rows of holes drilled through from front to back. The experience was not only humiliating but also painful. Welcome to public school in the late 1950s.

🐱‍AHEM. Pardon the interruption. This is co- writer Catatonic, and the above is just a taste of what to expect in Over the Fence, Into the Heart. We hope you’ll read the book to explore the rest of the story, along with many others that will stir your memories and pique your interest. For my part, I have to ask: Paddles? With holes in them? What was this, the Middle Ages?
Categorically yours,
Mick (aka Catatonic)