Partner jogs the memory
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.
There was also the ‘lineup’ where the wrathful parent would line all the children up for punishment – unless the anonymous child confessed that he … ummmm… drew a star on the toilet seat (Hypothetically speeaking, of course).
Sometimes it worked and a poor blighter got what he deserved and sometimes we all got punished.
hehe… memreeez. :)
Dad used the razor strop.
Mom used the wooden spoon.
Either way it was no fun.
Lol. Yeah dad was a fan of the strop too.
Mom’s main weapon was guilt. Her mom (grandma) however, had a couple of metel fly-swatters , failing those, there was a willow tree out in her back yard.
If we would go back to these, as a country, we might just clean up some of the mess caused by these twits who were not raise by these methods. After the age of 7, I had no fear of a beating from my Mom, but then she found out about the Hotwheels tracks and I had to hide them!
Worst was administered by my father with an inch rubber hose used for the milking machine. Man! Two whacks across my right hip/thigh area that I will never forget and had bruises from! Probably the last one I ever got from him. Thinking on it now, I think he embarrassed himself by that punishment so never did more than verbally thrash me after that.
The bible was Right, spare the rod….
…I was The Child Across Whom Yardsticks Are Broken. And they were the good ones, too.
lol.
I love the Bill Cosby line about his wife: “Holding the yardstick like a samurai sword…”
36 inch real wooden yardstick.
Not this crap wood they use today for yardsticks..
Mom would whale on me.
(She did use a bamboo cane on me once. That hurt and Dad damn near left her after that one.)
When I turned 13 and realized I was a bit bigger, she came at me one day with her yardstick, I yanked it out of her hands, broke it in half, threw it in her face and told her to try again and walked out.
Dad found me later that night brought me home and never said a word about it.
Mom never tried to hit me again. But the verbal battles we had(still have) were quite impressive.
I was 16 when I finally told my parents they could damned well use reason instead of force, unless they were in the mood for a fight. Thought for a second Dad was going to take me up on it, but he must have seen the set of my jaw and realized that I meant it. I think I phrased something along the lines of “you might win, but you’re going to know you were in a fight!”
Prior to that, I was subject to Dad’s belt, Mom’s yardstick and of course the switch.
Lord, but I hated cutting my own switch!
My folks used The Stick. 1/4-inch thick walnut an inch and a half wide and about two feet long, it was kept on top of the fridge. Woe be to you if The Stick could not be found. My brother hid it once and, as his luck would have it, it was his turn to get a beating when its absence was discovered.
Ahhh memories.
The one that comes to mind was when the wife was administering a “darn good thwacking” to our son. She was employing her usual tool of choice, a 14″ wooden cooking spoon.
On the third or fourth whack, the spoon broke. We both started laughing so hard that the miscreant escaped with little more than a ruffled ego.
My mammy was the disciplinarian in my family. We had two huge hickory trees in our backyard and she would make me go cut my own switch. DAMN. Talk about demeaning.
Although my pappy only beat me twice my whole life, they made up for ALL the beatings my mammy administered. I remember thinking, “If this goes on much longer I may actually die.”
Also, don’t forget the Church Beating. The one where the kid acts up in Church and is frog-marched outside and the whole congregation can hear the ass whuppin’ through the walls and THEN the kid gets frog-march back into the Church. The Horror. The Horror.
LOL! Libs, that is a good one, and though I only received one church beating, I can safely say, it took. I never needed another.
Mom used a wooden butter churn. It was about the size of a whiskbroom but had a curve that just matched the curve of your tush. I honestly don’t remember being hit with it (which I surely was before age 3), just being threatened with it…which worked wonders.