When my family moved to another state in the 1990s, I ended up at a high school that desperately wanted to talk my parents into signing the permission slip for corporal punishment. The principal and assistant principal got involved and were very pushy.

Finally Dad told them, with a heavy sigh: “You’re trying to tell me you need to hit someone who is more mechanically inclined than anyone I’ve ever known, and yet is just as vindictive, rebellious, and angry as any other 14 year old boy. He will retaliate, and it will be very expensive and difficult to prove.”

And they never did get that form signed.