#587 General Punishment

I look at the way parents parent today and I’m just a little glad mine used a tad bit of corporal punishment. I mean, a slap on the behind was certainly painful and all, but it got over early.
And my parents certainly weren’t off the deep end, with strops and cats-of-nine-tails and willow switches and stuff.
They just had a paddle, which they called the “board of education.”
I remember making one for my mom as my first woodworking endeavor. It was a 16-inch long by 3-inch wide piece of pine (oak would have just been sick.) It was a half-inch thick, and I sanded the edges and drilled hoes in it before I shellacked it.
The holes, I assumed, would make it look fiercer and raise blisters should I ever do something egregiously bad enough to get walloped by this club.
My mom’s earlier tool of discipline was a wimpy little ruler-like thing—perfectly intimidating for the younger kids, but well beyond my junior high capacity for pain.
As it turned out, she never used it. I think it scared her. And I never used any such thing on my kid. But in a way, I’m glad I didn’t have to be like today’s kids and be disciplined by being removed from the action.
The amount of times I got into trouble, I would have forfeited most of my childhood in “time out.”
I’d much rather get a quit swat and be on my way to the next envelope-bursting childhood act.
I was always ready to do things before my parents were ready for me to do them. And I got a cut and scrape or two along the way.
Which my parents would instantly disinfect by slathering on the mercurochrome. You remember mercurochrome. They don’t use it in the 21st century.
It killed germs all right.
Except it killed them with mercury.
Yep. The same society that is even now spending millions of dollars mitigating the environmental concerns of traces of mercury in school thermostats used to apply mercury directly to a kid’s open wound.
To help them.
Glad we took a “time out” on that.
Cause mercury makes you crazy. And crazy is not what the board of education likes...
America, ya gotta love it