This hurts me more than it hurts you!

Every where you go here in Australia, you see these cute kids in school uniforms. The uniforms are all different depending on the school they go to and also depending on the season. There is a winter uniform and a summer uniform. The hats are also different depending on the school and season.

These boys are clearly in 

I had a very interesting conversation with hubby in the car today about school uniforms. Of course he went to a school where you had to have one and he seems to be all for it. In fact he sees it as something very practical, in that you don't have to chose every morning what to wear, you just hop into the same old trousers and shirt and blazer if you are a boy. Of course if you are a girl it is a skirt instead of trousers.

But... even though it is a uniform you can jazz it up a bit. You can wear the jacket inside out. Or like hubby and friends did, they soaked their caps in hot water to make them shrink so that they had only a silly little cap perched on top of the head without any real purpose - a pimple on a pumpkin. There were very strict rules about when and where you can take of your blazer, and when you must wear your caps.

If you are a girl you can hoist your skirt up and make it into a real mini skirt. You can also do things with your ties, in fact having a uniform gives endless possibilities to invent fashion. I am almost envious, since I went to a Swedish school and no one has uniforms in Sweden, at least not to my knowledge. It would go against the national grain, seeming to inflict a rule about something as personal as your clothes on somebody, that would just not be acceptable.

Sometimes when we compare notes, hubby and me, on our childhoods and growing up, you wonder if we lived in the same universe. For example he told me that he sometimes "got the cane" for some mischief that he had been up to. The last time was when he was 17, and we are talking about "six of the best", on the bottom, with a wooden cane; needless to say I was horrified. Sweden is one of the first countries,  if not the first, where hitting children became illegal, over 50 years ago. There is also an ombudsman who looks after children's interest.  In Victorian public schools, however, corporal punishment only became illegal in 2006!

One problem with uniforms though is that they do tend to cost a bit and if you have a growing spurt in the middle of term you might be told by your headmaster, as was the case with hubby, "Why don't your shoes have a party and invite your trousers down?"  So for the rest of the term he had to wear knee socks and shorts in the middle of winter.  Still he has such fond memories of school that it seems churlish to act shocked and het up about it.

I have been present once though, when my grandmother, bless her, who looked after me and my sister, was at her wit's end and was going to discipline my sister by smacking her bottom with a hairbrush. The brush part flew off its handle and almost broke some ornament and we all three got such a surprise that we couldn't stop giggling, in fact it was one of those "laughing until your belly aches" moment. So much for discipline....with the back of a hair brush!  It became one of our favorite stories when we were thinking back on incidents involving our grandmother after she passed away.

Here is my grand mother with my sister and me, but the above incident was much later.