What I Learned about Spankings
I thought I would share something I wrote for fun while practicing writing from a child’s perspective. This is a true story. Everyone is about sixty years older by now, and Mom and Dad are no longer living, so there’s no use fussing about whether it was handled in the best way or not. It is what it is. A discussion about spankings is welcome in the comments.
When I was a really little kid like three or four maybe, I learned something about getting a spanking. I did something that was wrong, but I forgot what it was now. But Mama caught me doing whatever it was–probably something she told me not to do. She picked up a plastic hairbrush off her dresser and looked at me with that look–you know what I mean, the one that means you’re in trouble now. She said, “Come here, Janice.”
I knew what that meant, I was going to get a spanking. Well, I thought fast, and decided to turn the other way and run! Guess what? Mama could run faster than me. Guess what else? I didn’t just get a spanking, I got two spankings. Mama gave me the first one for doing whatever it was I had done that I shouldn’t have. She spanked me with the back of the hairbrush, and it broke in two. The second spanking was because I ran away when she told me to come to her.
We had to use that hairbrush with the handle broken off for a long time to brush our hair. Maybe that is why I remembered this spanking so long.
After I got older my little brother tried the same trick. We lived on a farm then and we both got a spanking on the same day. I got mine first because I was older and should have known better than to climb on those bags of cement in our yard.
But my little brother hadn’t learned about running away from spankings yet. He ran. He ran while Daddy was still spanking me and my other brother and my sister. He ran all the way around the barn and half way across the field behind the barn. He shouldn’t have done that, because Daddy gave him one swat after another all the way back to the house while they were walking. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think he ever tried that trick again either. I’ll have to ask him sometime.
Photo copyright: dmytroduda / 123RF Stock Photo
Written by Janice D. Green, author of The First Christmas and The Creation.
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