My brother Neville and I went to Ostend Primary School on Waiheke Island. The headmistress, Miss Ponsonby was a middle-aged spinster with permed hair and a sour face. I never saw her smile. She strutted around abusing and accusing. She used sarcasm and a heavy leather strap to keep the children in line. My brother was always being accused of doing things he had not done and would get ‘six of the best’ although he protested his innocence.

One day, Miss Ponsonby dragged my brother to her office by his ear. She had accused him of stealing the lunch of a girl in his class. She was particularly savage with the strap that day.

Neville was innocent. He knew the boy who was the culprit. Neville devised a plan for revenge. Our father used laxatives. These were in a sheet of little chocolate squares. Neville said to his classmates, “I have chocolate in my bag, don’t anyone touch it, or you are in trouble.”

At lunchtime he looked in his bag and the chocolate laxatives had disappeared. The boy thief, who had stolen the girl’s lunch, was one of those boys who like to fart on purpose. He would often do it on the school bus to stink us out and thought it a great joke. In the afternoon, in his class, he let off a fart and because he had consumed a whole sheet of chocolate laxatives, he had a very nasty accident in his pants.

In the school bus going home, my brother turned to me and said, “Revenge is sweet, Sis.”

Now with the wisdom that comes with age, I see that my eleven year old brother was driven to revenge by a sadistic teacher, who would not properly investigate and find the real thief, although Neville had protested his innocence.  Because of her dislike for my brother she preferred to use him as a whipping boy. It makes me feel sad to think that the headmistress was able to get away with her sadistic abuse of a young boy.