The Punishment of Punishments

This post is a tribute to my beautiful mother: Beverly Young.  She passed away one week ago on July 27th.  Mom did wonderful things for us kids from teaching us to make believe and dream big to making lunch for school.  Sometimes, however, she had discipline us.  This is my story.....

My parents weren't grounders.  There were no time-outs.  Those benign forms of punishment didn't really phase us.  We liked spending time at home and frankly my parents saw keeping us at home when we were being annoying as a punishment for themselves.  So they became spankers.  Say all of the bad stuff you want about spanking you tree-hugging hippy, a good whipping communicated with me in ways that your hand holding, super nanny ways never could.  See I have a hard-wired booty-brain connection that helped me to develop a moral compass.  Although my Dad is an imposing figure 6 foot plus and 220 plus, it was Mom you didn't want to spank you.  Dad would get you once or twice with the belt and you could keep your jeans or football pants or whatever on.  Take the licks, fake some tears and listen to the lecture that followed and you could go about your business.  

Mom was a different story.  We called her "Metal Arm".  It was bare-bottom hand-to-butt combat.  Mom would spank you until she got tired.  She would spank you until you got the message.  There was no after spanking lecture because you always got the message.  For all I know the woman may have spanked a few years off of my life.  You would just hold on and pray that she would hit both cheeks otherwise you might walk in a circle for about a month from being lopsided.  Once I fought with all my might to hold back the tears so that I could show her that she wasn't so tough... but you know what?  She WAS that tough.  She was across the room, easily 20 feet away.  I was at the door with my hand on the knob.  I waited until there was maximum distance between me and her to shrug my shoulders and say "That didn't hurt".  All I know is that I never made it out the door and she addressed my "concern".

I value these spankings greatly because they taught me that I could do whatever I wanted to but that there had to be consequences.  Please don't interpret any of what I have written to mean that Mom was in any way a cruel woman.  No the cruelty came when she discovered the ultimate form of punishment.  I once attempted to call the Department of Health and Human Services in hopes that they would intervene.  They just laughed at me.  That's what made this form of punishment so devastating.... nobody would or could rescue you.

When we would start to fight Mom would come into the middle of the room and command us all to get on our knees.  Once we had all knelt down she too would kneel..... and begin to pray.  The prayer would go something like this:

Father in Heaven, I kneel before you at this time to apologize for the fact that my children are poorly behaved.  Please forgive me for any part I may have had in them turning out to be so contentious.  I tried Heavenly Father.  I honestly tried.  I took vitamins while I was pregnant with them.  I tried to give them love but they just seem to want to fight and be mean.

The prayer would last for about one hour like this.  By the time she finished none of us could walk because either our knees were too numb or our legs would not unfold from under us.  This punishment would spill over into the next few prayers too.  Morning prayer, Evening prayer, even prayers over meals would be no shorter than 20 minutes.  After a while we developed a plan whereby one of us would volunteer to pray and offer a much shorter but still reasonable 1-2 minute prayer.  After "Amens" Mom would smile, thank whoever had prayed, and the say "Now it's my turn".  It wasn't fair.  It's one thing to fight with your sister.  Its another to defy Mom and her chosen form of discipline, but when you're afraid that God might strike you with lightning when you try to escape there is no escape.

So what do I do with my girls?  I mostly yell, we do some time-outs and the rare spanking.  I'm saving the punishment of punishments, the method Mom invented and perfected.  I'm just waiting until one of the girls shows up with some boy.

But in the end Mom's methods worked.  She raised 5 children and all of them have received great educations, none of us have ever done drugs, had a child out of wedlock, gone to jail or voted for Ralph Nader.  Thanks Mom.  Rest well.