Neanderpundit

In catechism we had just been through Mathew 25, and it was fresh in my mind. A bright saturday morning, I was reading in the living roiom while mom cleaned (Mom was always cleaning, ironing, or something) my sister came out into the living room (She must have been five) saying “Tastes icky” and holding up a can of toilet bowl cleaner. Mom immediately called Gloria, the RN down the street, and got an emetic and proceeded to make my sister puke up the whole contents of her stomach since 1971, the contents of the stomachs of the Hungarian Militia, and a couple of Matchbox cars.

Convinced the danger was out of the way, she commenced to wailing on me for leaving the bowl cleaner out (I would no more have done such a thing than the man in the moon, there were bottles of cleansers of all types, all over the house, ready for immediate spot cleaning of home, furniture, dog, cat, kid.)

So I felt quite put upon, having been tuned up for something I clearly didn’t do, and thought of the words of Jesus in Matthew:
‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

I voiced these words to my sister, who then repeated them to Mom. Mom, just coming off the near-fatal poisoning of one of her children, snapped.

Mom stomped into the bathroom and lifted me by one arm, and proceeded to ask me “AM * I * DOING * THIS * TO * JESUS?”
where each asterisk is an openhanded smack to some part of my anatomy. This went on for a very long time, at the end of which I was too enfeebled to do much but wriggle around at the end of my own arm.

I slept most of sunday recovering. This was the first time I got a mom asswhipping that dad didn’t follow with one of his own, and I wonder if it was because he felt she’d done enough for two or if I’d looked pathetic enough not to be retuned.

By pointing out the different kinds of beatings.

The Ogwife was relating a story about the kid in Walmart who pulled a toy from the bottom of the display, which caused the whole display to self destruct, like pulling the pin on a hand grenade.

Partner pointed out that this would get you a ‘Store beating” when we were kids, and this made me think of all the different kind of beatings you could get, when beatings were the rule of the day.

1: The Store beating was the mildest form of beating, and was usually administered with the open hand. It was meant to hurt, but not enough to start the waterworks. Usually it involved rubbing the affected part until back in the car, where one received

2: The Car Beating. This beating was for the beating you deserved for what you had done in the store, but which your parents didn’t want to embarrass themselves with right there in the store. A little beating was OK< and always encouraged by other store patrons in the case of misbehaving children, but the real work was always done with as much privacy as could be mustered. The Car beating was administered with the open hand (Usually) though it could involve a purse or window scraper, or in extreme cases, a seatbelt. The Car beating concentrated on the head, and was administered over the back of the front seat. Damage was concentrated on the head, intended to cause some pain, and crying was practically mandated, so you could be given "something to cry about!". If you were unluckly enough to live close to the store, your still-incensed parent(s) often graduated you to 3: The Outside the House beating. This was a full-contact beating, intended to cause anything short of stitches, and involved hands, belts, rakes, car parts, aluminum siding, or really, anything that was to hand. the Outside the House beating could range over some distance, as "holding" incurred penalty points, but if the subject ran too fast he could be ordered by a less-mobile parent to stand still, lest he incur the awesome wrath of 4: the Indoor beating. The indoor beating was n0-holds-barred close combat and involved the Holy Trinity of Beating Implements. Hebrew law being what it is, the primary beating implement had to be the belt of a parent or one of the subject's siblings. ("Thou shalt not beat a child with it's own belt") The secondary beating implement was the ubiquitous Hot Wheels Track. These orange strips of plastic were purpose built for thwacking prepubescent boys, cleverly disguised as a toy. Holding was required, as the flailing of the subject could cause domestic damage-though if the subject could be aimed toward something- say, the ugly lamp your husband won in a contest (Think "Major Award") it allowed the parent multiple options- a: Destruction of ugly lamp. b: Blame destruction on child c: Reason to beat child more, and pass off the responsability of the second beating shift on the husband. (Not many people realize that is the "real" story of the 'Christmas Story" lamp.) The final tool in the trilogy of indoor terror was the plunger handle. While I was a pussy and bent to the will of the belt or the hotwheels track almost immediately, Partner, being far tougher and more obstinate than I, often required the application of the Plunger Handle to submit. Memreeeeez.

Remember these? I do. I do really, really well.

I bought one of these bastards with my own money- at a time when I didn’t have a lot of scratch to throw around. I think it was Confirmation money. I saw the commercials and thought, good lord, I HAVE to have one of those.

And then I got it home. I realized, there is barely a piece of concrete in the neighborhood. Our driveway was shingletab, the sidewalk gravel, the street was oiled crush&run. There was concrete in front of the front door. So I would stand there and throw the superball at the concrete, but instead of flying many feet into the air, it just bounced up and hit the ceiling of the porch, back down to the concrete, lather, rinse, and repeat. Think “Bam. Thump. Bam. Thump. Bam. Thump. Ow!” as it bounced back and forth and finally creamed me in the throat, or groin, or eye, or ear.

Without concrete, a superball isn’t a very fun toy. So I was disappointed I’d spent my $5 for something I couldn’t play with.

And then, I thought of the tennis ball cannon. Every American kid has made one, and mine was six soda cans and a can of hairspray.

So, I thought. The Superball is just a projectile waiting to happen. I searched and searched until I found a piece of thinwall tubing that fit the ball, though a bit snugly.

I had my neighbor braze a cap on one end.

I greased up the ball.

A tiny bit of hairspray was all it took to put that thing halfway into orbit. it seemed to take forever to come down, and by the time it had, Gogi Miller had come out of his house (having heard the noise through his open kitchen window) and wandered over to investigate.

The laws of conservation of energy were still a foreign country to us; we saw the Superball commercials and decided that if we could use the superball cannon to bounce the superball against a hard surface, that would give it MORE POWER! and it really WOULD go into orbit.

So we pointed it against the one hard object in the neighborhood, Gogi’s house. It was a red brick, and we figured the right angle would have Nasa looking to us for the trajectory information for the (then, upcoming) moon launch.

We greased the ball. We stuffed it down the tube. We sprayed in a LOT of hairspray. We jammed the end of the tube against the hard packed indiana clay. And we lit it.

Gogi miller’s mom lived in a house with her husband and two kids, none of which had any inkling of what it takes to keep a house. They lived in squalor but for the kitchen. SHe was a nurse, and the kitchen looked like an operating room. Nobody was allowed in there, and it was her sanctuary. She also collected bric-a-brac. Lladro, when she could afford it. Hummel. Precious moments. She even had a few small Dresden pieces.

The superball leapt through the open kitchen window like a Harrier homing in on a rabbit. The superball, propelled at supranormal speed, bounced around the kitchen for about a half hour, destroying everything.

She must have heard a noise because she walked into the kitchen to see the ball banging and crashing it’s way through her fortress of solitude, looked out the window to confirm the identity of the culprits (as if there had been any doubt) and picked up the phone to call Dad.

See, she needed permission to give me the smackdown she was about to deliver, and she didn’t want me coming home bruised and bleeding without warning dad. And did she ever deliver a smackdown.

At that time it wasn’t uncommon for people to beat each others kids. We often were deserving of a beating (hell, between the ages of six and fourteen, someone should have been assigned to me to beat me constantly) and any available grownup would deliver as need dictated.

So Gloria took a handful of wooden spoons out of the drawer, grabbed an armload of shoes, picked up her husbands belt, and went out into the front yard.

You would think a 350 lb woman would have difficulty keeping up with a pair of preteen kids, but you would be wrong. She beat us with spoons until the spoons were all busted to toothpicks. She threw shoes at us if we looked like we were getting away. She beat us with her husbands belt until the buckle flew off and the end of the belt delaminated into shreds., And then she took her bra off and beat us with that, the metal hooks on the end not quite cutting into our flesh like a flail.

And then she bandaged us up, and sent me home.

Dad whipped my ass when I got there, but it was like “ho, hum. A belt. Well, I guess I’ll go to bed now” After the Gloria smackdown I swore I was never gonna fear another beating again, and I didn’t until I was nearly twenty.

Number, I think, nine of the ten worst asswhippings I ever received.