Raised by my mother and
grandmother, I was never able to get away with much. They both agreed on swift and immediate
punishment, so the wait time between my being naughty and my punishment was
almost instantaneous. My grandmother would at least ask for my side of the
story before yelling at me. My mother
was more the spank first, ask questions later type. She often discovered I was innocent
afterwards, but that never prompted an apology.
One time I woke up from an
afternoon nap being spanked. I must have been twitching in my dreams so she thought
I was faking and administered the swats. When I convinced her that I had been
fast asleep she said it was for all the other times I had fooled her. We went through a spell where I got one or
two spankings a day, so the one day I made it until bedtime without one, I
mentioned it. She grabbed me and swatted
my bottom twice for sassing her. Oddly, the spankings eased up after that.
Neither one cared about my
privacy or self-esteem, so if I saw them burst out of the house and march at
full speed toward me while I played outside with the neighborhood kids, I would
run back inside the house. I preferred
the privacy of our house than being punished in front of all those witnesses. Not
that it mattered; the whole neighborhood knew what was happening.
Mom blamed me for looking more
like my father’s family than hers and she made it sound like a curse, but I
took it as a blessing. Maybe I was
adopted? I confided that to a friend’s mom one day, but she smiled at me and
told me she was pretty sure I wasn’t adopted. Without taking sides, she
comforted me saying some parents are just stricter than others. I would one day
be too old to spank. I prayed she was right.
I decided
when I grew up and I had children, I would treat them with respect. If they
needed correction, I would try other means first before administering a
spanking. And I certainly would never do
it in public. I came up with warnings,
time outs, and “trips to the bathroom” which meant the culprit and I were about
to have a private “talk.” Sure, there
were swats on the hands when they reached for something dangerous and swats on
bottoms when they were disrespectful, but they were never spanked out of
frustration or anger, and it was never without thought.
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