Tag Archives: About

I grew up on the island of Jamaica. I entered Grade 5 at the age of 10 in September 1979 at a rural primary school. My class teacher was Ms C Lawson, then 34 years old, 5 ft 10 ins tall, of medium weight. She hung her cane of discipline beside the blackboard. One morning I had forgotten my math homework and got six strokes in the palms of my hands. Another time I was caught gabbing away and got it on the thighs. But the usual site was on the hands (that changed some months later).
I turned 11 on January 1980 and began overeating copiously. By April I had become truly obese (like a Sumo wrestler), and I now had an enormous, gigantic belly. As a result my shirts were forced open and my belly now hung two feet over my pants. I”d do the the top buttons on my shirt but could not button the lower ones. The front of my belly was now always exposed.
One day during a math test Ms Lawson caught me giving the answers to girl sitting beside me and called us both up. She explained to the rest of the class what we had done then reached for her cane. She then caned me on my belly five strokes. She caned the girl on the hands. Another day I got five strokes on the belly and five on the hands for excessive talking.
Yet another day Ms Lawson was correcting some timed essays which the class had recently done. She noticed that I had misspelt the word “animosity” and called me up. As I approached her desk she stuck her cane into my navel with force and commanded me to spell the word properly. Each time I misspelt it she would twist the cane, grinding it into my navel as if she were trying to drill and burst my belly. Finally I spelt the word correctly and she let me go.
Another day I had forgotten my Civics textbook and Ms Lawson dropped five strokes of the cane across my belly and two on my hands.
The girls in the class would cry after being caned but most of us boys never did. Nobody was ever sent to the principal. We were always respectful to our teachers. Everybody always wore the proper uniform to school. Our parents had nothing but praise for Ms Lawson. She was pleased with our consistent high scores in our tests and exams (all A’s), but if I turned in incomplete homework, came to class after the bell had rung or messed up otherwise, she’d get irate and the cane would be flayed leaving welts and bruises. The cane scars on my hands and arms would vanish in a day or two, but those on my belly remained and by June 1980 there was a criss cross pattern of cane scars on the front of my belly. These black scars would intrigue the other kids in my neighborhood who called me “Fatty Supreme”. One cute girl glamorised them as battle scars. To my mom and the other adults the scars were evidence that a diligent school teacher was effectively managing her class. Everybody from that class has become successful in life today. Within 10 years of leaving Ms Lawson’s class I got my Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, then later I obtained a PhD in Pharmacology and am a pharmacist today.