From: J Corbally (icorb@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 17:54:09 MDT
>Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 21:34:42 -0700
>From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>Subject: RE: toilet head dunking
>James writes
> > From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
> > > [ > Dunking usually consisted of a mob of
> > > > 10-20 or so chasing the 1st year students
> > > > around until exhaustion set in, grabbing
> > > > the nearest one, and flinging him bodily
> > > > into the stream. On occasion (for the big
> > > > bonus points) they'd manage to get the
> > > > swans riled up and watch the hapless child
> > > > get pecked and chased.
> > > > Then the apple fights of course. Good fun
> > > > when a teacher took one full force in the
> > > > side of the head.
> > >
> > > Would you mind saying more about where and when you
> > > were in school? And---if you would---I mean exactly
> > > where. This is all getting stranger and stranger.
> >
> > Sure,
> >
> > The school was Moyle Park in Clondalkin village, a suburb of Dublin
> > City. I was there from 1985 to 1990.
>Oh, well, that explains it. The Irish are well known
>for their rowdiness and bellicosity. I imagine that
>to this day the typical Irish lad has been in a dozen
>fights in as many years. "You'll get a broken airme
>you say that to me agin."
Probably so, although I was something of a freak in that regard, avoiding
physical conflicts like the plague. Odd really, given that the Corballys
in general are blessed/cursed with a very rapidly built, hot burning temper
that can disappear just as quickly as it sparked. They are easily capable
of extreme violence also.
You had to be tough in a boys school here, moreso in Primary level
education I found. I in fact had to leave one school due to
bullying. When they weren't bullying others, they typically turned on each
other outside school. I remember one of my antagonists was tied to a horse
and left to be dragged around a local park (1983 or thereabouts). He never
named names, of course. He was later expelled for something or other, last
I heard.
Strangely though, these last few years I'm not nearly as "timid" as I would
have been when I was younger. Not that I've been getting into fisticuffs
or any such thing - apart from the St. Patrick's Day incident (I have a
very short fuse for trespassers). I guess that's what happens when you get
old, or become a homeowner :) Anyways, back on topic...
> > > I think that most of me are growing up in parallel worlds
> > > quite unlike this, where people behaved themselves the way
> > > we did in southern California in the fifties and sixties.
> >
> > From what I've been told, the 60s schooling here seemed
> > to consist of avoiding cruel teachers and the beatings
>Well, that is what I am aiming to find out. I repeat,
>in southern California (and, as well as memory permits
>western Nebraska), everyone appeared to behave themselves
>rather nicely. You'd *never* have a gang throw anyone
>into a river, or strike an adult with an apple.
In fairness, it was more a case of the adults inadvertently getting in the
way of the intended target. Line of fire and all that. Let's not forget
gang wedgying either. Or the pile-up (a classic, that one. Not for the
claustrophobic though)
> > and/or buggery of the Christian Brothers.
>Okay, well, only a small minority---EVEN WITHIN the Catholic
>schools, I believe---ever had to put up with that.
True, although compounded by the Governments "hands off" attitudes to
schools and timidity in dealing forcefully with the Church.
It must be said of the Order who ran my school (Marist Brothers) that they
proved to be decent, fair and honourable men all round.
>I wish
>to confine the discussion to typical behavior over geography.
>Lee
>------------------------------
More information than I'm sure you cared to receive, but there you go :)
Basically, we were boys.
James...
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