My old junior school headmaster was a fierce man, violent some would say, but not without charm. 
As a small child, who was often in trouble, I was familiar with his punishments: the most notorious of which was referred to by the children as a "chinny". This involved been grabbed hard on the chin and shaken violently. 
 
Once, during a prayer in the assembly hall, I whispered something to my nearest friend, who sniggered. Mr Barham stopped the prayer's and singled me out. I was so embarrassed. With the whole school looking on, he called me up onto the stage and asked me to remove one of my shoes. He beat me in front of the entire school until my arse was red. He  was actually commiting a crime. it had been outlawed in UK schools a few years earlier but it wasn't the first or the last time I would take a beating from an old school teacher who really didn't care for the new rules.

  Having said all of that, this is a man I had a great deal of respect for, he was intelligent and witty, he was strong and nobel, with a good moral fibre. I lacked a father figure as a child, and there are things this man said to me, a lifetime ago, that still echo around my head to this day. He was the first to see an inkling of creative talent in me.

  In assemblies (gathering of the whole school) he would often give a sermon. Not a religious sermon, although he was a man of God, but more of a soliloquy about the world. One particular performance I remember was about the evils of T.V. and how as a generation we were wasting our childhood sitting in front of a screen. He concluded that if humans weren't careful we would devolve into fat slobs, with only one finger, to press buttons on a permanently attached remote control. 
He actually wasn't far wrong... that was only 30 years ago.

  About a month ago my grandma called me as she regularly does on a Sunday, and during the conversation she told me that she had been to an anniversary celebrating the evacuees from the war. My grandma was an evacuee, and has told me what a significant part of her life that was, so I was not surprised that she had attended. She said that Mr Barham, my old headmaster, had also been there, and had given a short recital. He read a passage from his own diary that he kept as an 11 year old boy, around the same age I was when he beat me with my own shoe. He read the entry of the day a soldier came to the door of the house, where he had been sent far away from his family, and told him that his mother had died in an air raid. 
I wondered what that felt like. I wondered what strength he had to find as a child so small, so alone. How he came to terms with life after the war. I realised why he had been so hard on a generation of kids who had no respect and very little idea of the realities he had to face at their age.

  It's funny how perspectives  change over time, how new information can reveal truths hidden for years leading to a better understanding of life in general. 
 

hope you enjoyed this short story from my life.