When I checked in with him later, he seemed genuinely proud of the results of his reflection. He had decided, he said, to hit very softly from now on. Of all kinds of punishment, the physical kind has a nearly unique relation to time. It cannot be made right in the future. Words can be taken back and soothed with other words.
Money can do something to compensate for lost things.
Demotion can be reversed. But there's no taking back a beating. One morning when I was new at middle school, a boy threw another student across the library. Because the facility was undersized and crowded, the victim didn't go very far, but the act needed to be addressed. After classes started, I looked up the offender's telephone number in a thick, computer generated register kept on the counter in the office.