Don't do it! I'm talking to the ones who just read the title of this piece and are already firing up to dash off a letter opposing spanking. Relax. If you don't want to spank 'em, don't. Discussion over.
I was just talking to someone the other day about this, though, and as the conversation progressed I came to realize that I have quite a base of experience in being the recipient of childhood rump-roastings. Being raised in the South, and in the 60's, there was practically not a snowball's chance that you weren't going to get yours if you did something you shouldn't. Believe me, you're listening to the voice of experience here.
One of the first memories I have, in fact, of doing something truly STUPID was the time I was getting spanked by my mom, and I, in a stroke of genius, turned around in mid-spanking and announced "That didn't even HURT!". Note to kids- don't ever do that. When I said that I saw a glow of newfound resolve come over my mom, like something in a movie- a resolve to adjust the process until it did hurt. She was wildly successful in doing this, and I never tried that tactic again.
Without a doubt, though, the crowning moment of my getting-my-hide-tanned career came when I was around 9 or 10 years old. We lived out the street from a grocery store, and the store still sold milk in big glass jugs. Over time, I got the inspiration and developed a technique to climb up in a tall tree near the store with a slingshot. Can you see this coming? As the neighbors would be walking home from the store carrying those jugs of milk at their sides, I would wait for the perfect moment, and POW! The jug would just explode right there in their hands and milk would fly everywhere.
God help me, I've gotten better over the years, but if you'd been there to see that, I guarantee you would have laughed, and I STILL think it was some of the funniest stuff I ever saw. I know, I know, but it was!
The technique was ballistic genius, if I do say so myself. The victim would never see the rock coming, nor would they see it quickly moving away behind them. Virtually all they would be aware of would be the explosion itself, and let's just say that little old ladies can jump pretty dang high under the right circumstances! See, you're laughing, aren't you? Aren't you ashamed?
My downfall came, however, when I felt I had to share the fun with a smaller kid in the neighborhood, my neighbor Randy. He went up in the tree with me one day, and it wasn't long until a target appeared strolling down the street, milk jug in hand. Experienced now, I took aim, and - BULL'S-EYE! A deluge of dairy product sprayed out in every direction, a true thing of beauty to me at the time. The only thing I hadn't planned for, though, was Randy's goofy laugh.
He had one of those Nerd laughs, where you really don't make any sound until you inhale, then you sort of honk like a seal. I tried to get him to be quiet, but every breath brought a new honk, and it didn't take long for our adrenaline-charged victim to start zeroing in on the source of the sound. It was sort of like dry-land, redneck SONAR. In no time at all, she was standing at the base of our tree, screaming at us to come down.
Now, what happened from this point forward won't make much sense unless you understand a thing or two about small-town life in the South back then. Everybody not only looked after their own kids (how radical is that?), they looked after each other's kids as well. If I was at a neighbor's house playing when suppertime came, we all went in and ate supper. Nobody had any qualms about feeding another kid, and the same sort of principle was at work when you got into trouble. If you were involved in something that called for a spanking, being somebody else's kid was not a get-out-of-jail-free card. If the other kids got one, you got one. I know I've risked scarring some social scientists for life by telling this, but it's true, and we lived.
So, what happened was, she gave us our first one right there on the spot, under the tree. I was amazed at what an arm she still packed at her age! Then, of all things, she took us over to HER mom's house (another past victim), and SHE took a turn at warming our little fannies. Finally, we got taken to each of our own families for a few more rounds. This day would eventually see me rack up the highest butt-whipping-per-offense ratio of my entire career. At least, so far. It would also prompt me to hang up my slingshot for good. It's like the NFL. You just have to be able to recognize when it's time to retire.
That Randy. I hope that little heathen learned his lesson from all this.
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