Southern California in the early seventies is the setting for the events I will describe. I attended elementary school in a suburban city in San Gabriel Valley. You might think California is a liberal state where they didn’t apply corporal punishment in school, but you would be wrong. I witnessed numerous paddlings in front of the class from 1st through 3rd grades. Once I was in 4th grade, there was never any hint of paddlings, so maybe there was some legislation or a school policy that ended that practice. It’s also possible Mrs C simply chose not to use corporal punishment. Our first
