"O" is for Oldest Child

I am the oldest of three boys. A fact that my father reminded me of many times as a child. Today, I completely understand why he would tell me that, but back then, I hated hearing it.

When I was seven and Kyle was four, we were caught jumping on the bed. Kyle was yelled at and told to leave the room. I was spanked.

I remember being mad all night because it was so unfair. It wasn't so bad that I got spanked. That happened all time. It was that Kyle did not get spanked and the only explanation I was given was that I was the oldest and had to set an example for my brothers.

At the time, I didn't consider that dad had already told me three times to stop jumping on the bed and Kyle had just then come in to join me. A seven year old thinks in simpler terms. So, to even out the punishment that I didn't understand, I found Kyle and punched him in the face to share the pain.

I got spanked again.

---

Happily participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. For the entire month of April, 1,743 bloggers are working their way through the alphabet. One letter every day but Sundays for a total of 26 days.

Click here to visit the website and get more information to see if you might want to join in next year. It's a lot of fun, introduces you to hundreds of new blogs and gives your writing some fantastic exposure.

Silence Speaks Volumes

It has hit that time of the year when the temperature in the evening is perfect. It is beautiful outside. There's a gentle breeze and for some reason, I actually feel like stepping outside of my house. Last night was one of those nights.

I noticed it when I got home and just felt drawn to go out and enjoy it. I ran into the house, changed my clothes and grabbed a good book. I sat in my front yard, planning to enjoy the weather and get lost in a story.

About the time I got settled, one of the neighbor kids yelled a greeting my way. I gave a quick acknowledging wave, but carefully avoided making eye contact or answering back for fear of engaging them in a conversation. To my surprise, they left me alone. The girl had a friend over and they were busy playing with Barbies while lying on the roof of another neighbor's car. The boy was playing in his sandbox.

"Awesome!", I thought. "They're distracted."

Excited at the idea that I might actually get to enjoy this weather and my book, I settled in. I had read about a page, when the girls had a disagreement which required screaming for some reason.

Girl A: That is not true. You're so stupid!
Girl B: Nu-uh! My gramma told me. Cats have 12 lives! That why they live so long.
Girl A: My cat got hit by a car last week and it was just dead!
Girl B: Well, he must have used up the other lives before then.
Girl A: Not HE!!! She was a girl!
Girl B: She must have been a stupid girl for playing in the road!

I almost corrected their mistake about cats and explained that all cats were stupid, but decided against it. They would have just brought the conversation to me and started complaining about each other and wanting me to fix it. I was just about to give up and retreat back to the house when one of them picked up a brick and chased the other down the street to hit her with it. Finally, some peace.

A few minutes later, the boy started wailing from the sandbox. As he cried, he picked up the toy dump truck and threw it against the swing set. Then, he picked it up and did it again. I surrendered my plan and withdrew back to the serenity of my house.

Luckily, I do not have small children any longer, so my house is fairly quiet. However, it hadn't always been that way. I remember once snapping at Christian because his laughing was beginning to grate on my nerves. Unfortunately, he was also old enough to talk.

"Excuse me, Dad. Is my being happy irritating you?" Imagine this being said with the dripping sarcasm of a snotty punk.

"I don't give a crap if you're happy, just do it silently. The same goes for when you sad, angry or bleeding."

Before I get angry comments from parents who "love" their kids and think that I should be ashamed, please note that the above dialogue was a joke. He didn't really have to be silent if he was bleeding. In fact, if he got blood on the carpet or the furniture and didn't say something, he lost his "time-outside-of-the-cellar" privileges.

Sometimes a parent just wants quiet. This is part of the reason why young kids can get into such mischief. When people hear stories of crazy things kids have done, they often ask, "Where were the parents?" The honest truth of the matter is, they were usually right in the next room, but since the kids weren't making any noise, they were just enjoying the temporary bliss. This happened once when I was very young.

My brothers and I were at home alone with our father one evening. I was seven years old. Kyle was four and Trevor was two. After Dad had threatened pleaded with us a few dozen times to quietly play without fighting, we found our way to the basement. It was far enough away, that we didn't have to be as careful about our noise.

After a considerable amount of time, we started finding new things to do and soon discovered how much room there was inside the dryer. One of us would crawl in and lean to one side to get it to turn. We fought over whose turn it was and kept pushing each other out. At one point, we got Trevor in there and we turned the barrel with our hands. We had a great time.

I knew this glorious machine was capable of turning itself, but every time I pushed the button that I had seen my mom pushed to make it work, nothing happened. At the time, I didn't know about the different settings and dials. Plus, the door would have to be shut for it to activate.

Once Kyle and I got bored with not being able to turn the dryer on so Trevor could go for a ride, we decided to just shut him in. Kyle held the door shut and I found a board to prop between one of the basement support beams and the handle of the dryer door. I have no idea why we did this, but I distinctly remember doing it.

Once we were certain he would not be able to get out, Kyle and I headed back up the stairs only to be met by our father at the top.

"Where's your brother?"

(shrugs) "I dunno."

Trevor's shrieks for help drowned out our pleas of false ignorance and he was soon rescued by Dad. That was the end of our night of fun.

The next morning, as Dad finished recalling the events of the previous evening to our mother over the breakfast table, she only had one comment as she glared at us.

"I hoped you spanked their butts."

"Yup. All three of them."

"What?!? You spanked the baby too? Why?"

"For being dumb enough to crawl in there."

This Witch Had No Candy

I have been spending a lot of time in schools lately. I substitute teach for several different districts and am working on a teaching degree which requires me to do a lot of classroom observation. I even got to spend a day at my old high school. I have been amazed at how different school is from when I went.

There are different teaching methods, classroom set ups, educational theories and safety concerns than there were when I was a student. One of the things I remember from school that no longer exists in most states is the possibility of being beaten with a plank of wood for misbehaving.

Q: Do you know what the holes are for?
A: To cut down on wind resistance.

SWATS!  That's what we called it. If you didn't stop acting up there was always the possibility of getting swats. Nobody wanted that.

Despite the fact that those paddles were rarely taken down to be used, the sight of them hanging on the wall was enough of a deterrent for most kids to stay out of trouble. We knew someone was in deep doo-doo if the teacher started to reach for the paddle. If the offense was bad enough, the teacher would threaten to get Mr. Scrivner to deliver the punishment. He was known for his paddlings and it wasn't good.

I am not an advocate for bringing paddling back into schools. While I am not against kids getting a good swat when they need one, the liability and potential for misuse is just too much, so I am not really against this practice, I just think it is better to leave it out of the system. I got swats once in 2nd grade and, trust me, I deserved it. I also got swats once in the 7th grade. Once again, I had it coming. However, I can't tell you how many times I got swats in the 4th grade. These were different.

I started the 4th grade with a lovely teacher named Mrs. Scroggins. I still don't know if this was her first teaching job or first job at our school, but we had never seen her before. I went to a rural school and the entire fourth grade was in one classroom. It was a very large class. After a month or so, it was determined that she had more students than she could handle and one-third of us would be moved across the hall into the 3rd grade room. Those students would then be in a split 3rd/4th grade classroom. I was one of them that got moved.

She had a special teachers' lounge,
where she dined with other teachers of her kind.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a legal expert and have no idea what exactly constitutes libel or slander, so I will not be using the real name of my new teacher. For the remainder of this post, she will be referred to as the Witch.

For the most part, it was a regular classroom. The Witch was strict and not nearly as cheery as sweet Mrs. Scroggins, but I wasn't worried. If I kept my head down and did my work, then everything would be fine. It turned out it wasn't that easy.

Now, I hate when whiney kids start complaining that their poor grades or punishment is because "that teacher doesn't like me." While that is possible, it is rarely the case. Bad grades are usually due to a deficiency in the performance of the student. In most cases, if a student got into trouble, it is because he was misbehaving in some way, but something different was going on in this class. I won't even try to make the claim that The Witch didn't like me, because I don't think that was true. I just believe that she had a bubbling cauldron in the coat closet an evil side.

The trouble started with a comic book assignment. Each week, we constructed a comic book about an alien named Gloo McFoo. I am not positive on the name and scoured Google for pictures, but can't find it. This was 30 years ago. Give me a break. On Monday she gave us 3 or 4 papers with the pages of the comic that we were to color, fill in some of the blanks with our vocabulary words, glue to construction paper and construct a small comic book by Friday. This was not a difficult assignment and was supposed to enhance our reading, vocabulary, spelling and art skills. There was a small problem. I hated Gloo McFoo.

See! Aliens are usually green.

I didn't hate him at first, but the hatred came pretty quickly. The first week I did the assignment and turned it in, but when we got them back on Monday, I discovered the Witch was not happy with my work. She pointed to the example hanging on the wall and told me that Gloo McFoo is a blue alien. She berated me in front of the whole class for coloring him green. Honestly, I hadn't really thought about it. In the cartoons on TV they were green, so that's the color I used. The Witch didn't let up on her tirade until I was crying in front of everyone.

The following week, I made sure to color him blue instead of green. I did not want a repeat of the week before. However, when they were returned this time, she said she wanted to see me in the hall. The Witch grabbed the paddle as we stepped out. I didn't know what I had done, but was already shaking, because I knew what was coming.

My heinous crime was that I had failed to trim the edges of the construction paper to match the size of the papers on the inside. I cried that I didn't know I was supposed to. The Wicked Witch gave me three swats.

The worst part was that I hadn't trimmed them the week before either, but the Wicked Witch hadn't said anything. I had corrected the thing that she said was wrong and still got into trouble. Being the wonderful child that I am, I did not tell my parents about this. I didn't realize that what this teacher had done was wrong and I did not want to get into any more trouble at home for being "bad."

The following week, I received swats for not numbering the pages. This time I tried to explain that she had never told me that before. The Ugly Wicked Witch gave me an extra one for arguing. The next week, my swats were for putting the title at the top of the cover page instead of in the center. Once again, it didn't matter to the Ugly Wicked Witch that I had done it that way since the beginning and she had never corrected me.

This practice became my Monday morning routine for the rest of the fourth grade. It didn't happen every single week, but it was the majority of them. I always did something wrong: the middle crease wasn't centered, too much glue in one of the corners, forgot to put my name on it and others. I will admit that after a few months of this, my effort on this assignment slacked off. I knew I would not be able to please the Ugly Wicked Witch and just accepted the fact that I was going to get paddled. Plus, the worst part of getting paddled was the fear beforehand. I was no longer scared of it.

It wasn't until I got much older that I realized the problem was her and not me. The Ugly Evil Wicked Witch never went to get another teacher to observe the swats. That was school policy to ensure it was done properly. Sometimes, she didn't even take me out to the hall, which was also policy. She did it in the classroom in front of the other kids.

I was relaying this story over Thanksgiving dinner a few years back and my mother exclaimed, "I wish I had known about this." In hindsight, I wish I had said something, but my 9 year old mind did not understand at the time.

Now, I do not want to give the impression that I was scarred for life and horribly traumatized. It should not have happened, but it was just a bad year. I still believe I had a wonderful childhood, she was just a dark shadow that didn't last very long. The Horrible Ugly Evil Wicked Witch has since retired and is no longer working with children. Hopefully, I never learn what nursing home she is in.