Blind Justice

1. Growing up.  I grew up during the 1940s through the 1950s and 1960s to the sounds of Glenn Miller, the Andrew Sisters and Elvis. Now, during 1962, when I was 14, my maths teach-er was a little blond ‘terrier’ by the name of ‘Adolph’, affectionately known as ‘Dolfie’, who could write his theorems in chalk on the green (‘black’) board as straight as a ruler without a ruler, a true stickler to the architectural perfection of what they called algebra, geometry and trigonometry at the time.

2. Come exams.  The results of test papers (maths) were, in Grade 10,  usually handed out after the end-of-the-quarter break on the first day of the new quarter, and our tormentor Dolfie had this Nazi-like rule for the boys in the class, for instance:

   <40%: One stroke with the cane

   <35%: Two strokes with the cane

   <30%: Three strokes with the cane.

   So, after the first quarter of 1962 and after I had received my test scores and calculated my ‘sentence’, I went to the front of the class to stand in the queue for my punishment of three strokes, with boys arranged from one stroke (first) through two strokes (in the middle) and three strokes (last).  This we had to receive by circulating the ‘course’ one by one, receiving only one stroke at a time and returning to our seat only after all the strokes have been duly received.

3. Blind Justice. The pain of the cumulative effect of the first two strokes were awful and I managed to unobtrusively slip away and take my seat, thus cheating the ‘hangman’ out of one stroke.  Come the second quarter, my grades had improved and I went to take my place in the queue for my now well-deserved two strokes with the cane.  This time, however, I couldn’t dare to cheat; it would have been too obvious; besides,  there were no handy ‘three strokes’ candidates behind me to cover my back.

   It was, however, only after I had received my two strokes that I realised that I had miscalculated and that I was supposed to have received only one stroke, not two, and so the scales of justice were finally balanced.             

   I would have given my proverbial ‘right arm’ for somebody else to take my place in the queue for the punishment, but who? That is the beauty of the Gospel: 

   “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous”. [Romans 5:8, 19].p

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