There is an important difference between wondering about an experience and actually deciding to try it.
Most of us are curious about things we have absolutely no intention of doing.
We might wonder what parachuting feels like without ever jumping from an aeroplane. We can wonder how actors cope with stage fright without ever wanting to stand before an audience ourselves.
So why would somebody take curiosity one stage further?
The accounts suggest there was rarely one simple explanation.
For some adults, it really did appear to be a question of settling an old mystery.
For others, nostalgia played a much larger part.
They remembered an era of polished school corridors, gym shoes, imposing teachers, punishment books and the formidable reputation of the headmaster’s study. The atmosphere itself had become part of their memory of school.
Consequently, when some adults attempted to recreate an old-fashioned disciplinary scene, they discovered that the surroundings and ceremony could matter almost as much as the punishment.
An old school desk, a stern lecture or simply having to wait could evoke surprisingly powerful memories.
Others had actually experienced corporal punishment when younger and were curious about whether the adult experience would resemble what they remembered.
Frequently it did not.
Childhood memories are filtered through fear, age and circumstance. Something experienced voluntarily as a grown adult cannot completely reproduce an event which originally occurred under entirely different conditions.
That distinction appears repeatedly in people’s recollections.
They might reproduce the setting.
They might reproduce the ritual.
They might even reproduce some of the apprehension.
But they could not become schoolchildren again.
Perhaps that explains why some found the experience strangely disappointing, while others discovered that it stirred memories more strongly than expected.
