As Parrent speaks, her voice breaks and it is clear that Brian is still vivid in her mind’s eye. “I remember that he was wearing a white shirt and when the teacher finally opened the door, he was covered in blood. My first thought was that he must have cut himself, but no. He’d had a nosebleed, something that happened to him all the time. It was awful. He might have deserved to be reprimanded; I don’t know. What I do know is that more than 50 years later, I can still see the blood.”
Despite the lasting impact of this incident on Parrent — we can only guess how it affected Brian as he continued his schooling and came of age — it’s tempting to assume that this type of discipline is a thing of the past. After all, the encounter took place in 1963