Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Part 4

There’s a word that we don’t say in my family, I don’t even say the word in my head for fear that my mom will hear me thinking it and the next thing you know I’ll be cleaning out the chicken coop or shoveling manure. I remember a rare occasion where one of my friends came over to play. We didn’t have TV or video games but the untamed country was calling out. I was so excited and had so many lovely things planned. We’d start out the day with a good horse backing riding adventure followed by some cowboy/indian hide and seek in the hundreds of acres of forest. After a quick lunch, we would play a little rodeo by trying to ride the pigs and finishing the day by going mud jumping and washing all the grime off in the creek. Yep, it was going to be a great day. We were in the house not 10 minutes after my friend had arrived when she thoughtlessly said the word that brought fear, misery and pain to so many, “I’m bored.”
My brothers looked at her and started backing towards the door, slowly so they didn’t draw any attention to themselves. I too was slowly distancing myself from my “friend.” She was on her own, didn’t she know who my mother was, didn’t she know that when you live on a farm there are more chores than Bill Gates has dollars, didn’t she know that when she said “bored” we all would be suffering for her sins. You don’t get bored on a farm where there are hundreds of acres to explore and even more ways to break an arm. You just don’t get bored and even if you did, you don’t tell mom.


















My siblings and I learned from a young age that the “B” word was bad. We could almost recover from any other word (notice I said recover, we would still get punished but we would recover) but the “B” word was more than we could take. Our carefree day would be ruined with the mention or thought of the “B” word were we would find ourselves pulling weeds from the rows of vegetables, chopping wood to build up the wood pile, picking up trash around the farm, lawn mowing (mind you, we’re not talking about a cute little lawn on a riding lawnmower, we’re talking about a 20 acre piece of property on an old push lawnmower), painting beehives, digging fence posts, clearing out brush, cutting back the man-eating blackberry bushes…I could keep going…but do you understand a little bit about why we don’t say the “B” word?
Even to this day, we don’t say that word. And one day, when we’re all parents, the first think we’ll teach our kids is when we go to grandpa’s and grandma’s not to say “I’m bored.” .....Well, maybe we’ll let our kids learn the hard way…

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Part 3

Either my folks became tired of buying wooden spoons or they decided that their children’s little hiney’s had grown calloused and the spankings didn’t have the same effect. So a new punishment was in order. This new punishment became the “end all” of punishments because it could be used for any reason and it never left a mark. A spanking on the other hand could leave a handprint; therefore proof… The new punishment was; writing. Now you’re thinking to yourself “What’s so hard about a little writing?”
You wouldn’t be so coy if you had to write “I will not hit my brother,” 100 times. Actually, I would have been grateful if I just had to write what I had done wrong 100 times. Usually, it was 500. I would like to put into perspective how much 500 times is; the average page of lined paper has 28 lines, to write 500 times would use up almost 18 pages of paper but being earth friendly, we would write front and back with made it 9 pages. That’s the size of a good college paper.
Let me try to remember all the things I had to write:
I will pick up my coat
I will not swear (I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve written this on more than one occasion)
I will not talk back
I will do my chores
I will clean my room (I never got my room cleaned because I was too busy writing)
I will not laugh when I’m being spanked (This is in transition from one punishment to the next)
I will listen to my parents
I will do my homework on Saturday, not Sunday
I will not yell
I will keep my guinea pig in its cage (I ended up not doing my writing for this one and as a consequence my sweet little Licorice was given away)
I will practice the piano every day
I will feed the animals

I won’t bore you with more, but now you can see what kind of person I really am by all the naughty things I was punished for. And it’s not like we were told we needed to write 500 times “I will not sneak mom’s whoppers” and then my folks would forgot about it, no, no, no. In addition to the writing, we were grounded from just about everything but breathing and pooping until the writing was finish to mom’s satisfaction. We were always given the choice of when we wanted to do our writing, but our choice greatly affected our happiness and if our day consisted of anything more than lines blurring together.
You would think with all this writing, I would have beautiful handwriting. Not so much, in fact, my husband says that I have boy handwriting (I think he’s jealous because he writes like a little girl). None of my siblings have good handwriting now that I think about it. Perhaps it’s because of the torture we were forced to endure that was our punishment; it broke our little spirits, and fingers.

Lesson Learned: Don’t swear, talk back, hit my brother, laugh when being spanked, yell….oh hell, I don’t know if I learned anything.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Part 2

My folks did (and probably still do, though it's been years since I've received the laying on of the hand) believe in spankings. Through my childhood they've tried many types of tools to assist in the discipline of their innocent children. My siblings and I, also used many different tools to protect our sensitive hiney's from becoming calloused and rough. We all know there is nothing more unattractive then two little red cheekies.

Of course there was the classic wooden spoon, I think my mom bought boxes of them wholesale because I know whenever one of those baby's broke a new one took it's place like magic. My dad was a fan of threatening with his belt. In truth I don't ever remember actually receiving a good old fashion whopping with dad's leather belt. But when we heard that soft leather start to slide through his belt loops, we ran as fast as our naughty little legs could go.
In turn, we kids, tried many different types of padding to soften the blows. At first we weren't very good at padding our rear ends, apparently a couch pillow gave me a ghetto booty that my folks knew didn't run in my blood. We tried odd shaped objects, books, socks, toilet paper and even out of desperation, our hands. Though, none of us were clever enough to think of putting on every pair of underwear that we owned (Aramie, you're so smart!). Sometimes, if we were really creative my dad would end up laughing at the toilet seat stuffed in the pants of the offendee and let the culprit go, but more likely than not, we didn't have enough of an imagination to make the old man laugh.

One particularly trying evening for my parents, we angels, wouldn't go to sleep. They asked nicely, asked not so nicely, told us to go to bed, and finally called us downstairs... Our cries of promises to go to bed fell on deaf ears as we were lined up and ordered to stand still while they came up with a really good punishment. After a short (too short) debate on the best way to "convince" us kids that it was bedtime, my folks decided that we would be receiving spankings (obviously they were tired since they didn't come up with anything more inventive than a little spanking). I underestimated my folks...
To make it a little more exciting, my folks decided that we kids would go outside and pick out our weapon of choice in which we would receive the needed incentive to go to sleep. I looked at my siblings in disbelief, they're eyes were wild with excitement, we were able to pick the stick, any stick we wanted! The pending punishment didn't look so daunting as we filed outside to the 20 acres of sweet options. I, being the oldest, took action and went forward before we lost the light. Who knows what horrible choice we would make if we couldn't clearly see the color and style of the said stick. I went to a favorite tree of mine with willow type branches. I loved this tree, when you swung the thin branch just the right way, it cracked like the bull whip Jim Craig used when he won the hearts of so many women in the Man from Snowy River. Yes, this would be the perfect stick for us. It was small, bendy, thin and made the most lovely sound. My brother, Marshall, on the other hand picked up a thick 2 ft long 2x4 and said it would be a better choice because is was thicker and would hurt less.
My folks had said that we needed to make the decision of which stick was going to be used as a group so a vote was in order. Captain and Logan were undecided and so Marshall and I had to politic to get their votes. Apparently, I should be a politician because I said if they picked my stick, it would hurt less because it was smaller (I lied). My persuasive powers and lies were convincing, I beat Marshall by a landslide. Like a champion bobsled team who had just one a gold medal, we skipped into the house with "the Stick." My dad took one look at "the Stick" and at that moment he knew that none of his kids were destined to be a doctor, lawyer, teacher or a scientist, he would be happy if he got a Burger King manager out of one of us. He asked if we were sure that this was "the Stick" that we wanted to use. We all nodded enthusiastically. Three times he asked us if we were sure, hoping that one of us would show the slightest signs of intelligent thought. But his hopes were dashed as he cracked the bull whip, once, twice, three and four times.



I let Marshall pick my stick now and I go to bed on time

Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Part 1

I've been inspired by Aramie's blog to enlighten all my blogger buddies of the many ways to punish your children. I'll divide it into a series because all the trouble I was blamed and punished for will not fit in one segment. Every one of these punishments happened to me whether I deserved them (I never did ) or not.
Thinking up new punishments is fun and creative plus it will make your kids realize that mommy's and daddy's aren't as dumb as they originally though, and the best part is that your kids will turn out as good as I did...

One of my first memories of being punished was when I tattled for something my brother, Captain, did. I ran to my mom with my tongue on fire ready to tell what naughty thing Captain had done. My mom patiently waited for me to finish confessing the sins of my brother (Captain, by the way, was hiding somewhere; thankful his sister was taking care of him) afterwhich I waited to hear what wise decision my mom would make. To my delight she asked me what I thought Captain's punishment would be. Of course I was flattered to be a part of such an important decision. After going through my memories of all the punishments I had endured in my short years, I decided the worst was five good spankings with a wooden spoon.
I happily trotted ahead of my mom to show her the place where Captain was crouched down with his eyes tightly closed. She picked Captain up by his chubby little arm and gave him his punishment, five good whacks with her favorite wooden spoon. I supervised and maybe even counted outloud to make sure every whack was administered to my satisfaction. My brother was in tears, it hurt me more than it hurt him, but he needed to learn... My mom let Captain go and like a snake reached out and grabbed my arm. As I cried out in betrayal, my mother gave my innocent rear-end five identical whacks for tattling.

I don't tattle anymore.