I remember getting less than five spankings.After the first one, I really did attempt to avoid them.
As my only present parent, my mother usually held the exclusive monopoly on even the threat of spankings, but I did get one when I was three years old from a babysitter when I totally bit a bully (total fluke – I’d probably never do that now), and a very memorable one was administered to me by my grandfather - a man so inherently and elementally fair as to be an actual district court judge in real life: never raised his voice, neither hemmed nor hawwed, and was a great role model whose example I normally followed to the letter.
He didn’t even really want to do it, it ends up.
It was a complication of science, experimentation, and curiosity: a misunderstood boy, betrayed by both his grandmother, genetics, and (albeit inadvertently) the very nice people of the Proctor and Gamble™ company.
My grandparents lived down the block from us - when my school was out but my mother was still teaching, I would stay at their house.
My grandfather was in court most of the day, so my grandmother would watch me. Somewhat.
I was eight, and normally I had lots of books to read, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to just read books all day, so we would watch television. I know that sounds weird but no, you’re right, that does sound weird.
Anyway, this fateful day was very hot, and as the early summer heatwave wore on, my grandmother thought it a good idea that I cool off with a bath. She also knew that this was a good way to get a little time to herself, as the bath was a watery theatre to me, where I would make up stories and have adventures: all she had to do is yell out my name occasionally when I stopped talking to myself.
My grandfather had built a little bathroom right off the kitchen, complete with a bathtub. It used to be a breakfast nook, so it was a bit cramped, but I liked it because it was supposed to be for “guests” and I always felt fancy when I was in there.
It had fancy soaps in the shapes of little fruits (which we couldn’t touch) and fancy hand towels (which were not for drying your hands on) and Dixie Cups™ (totally just for show - which is why the dispenser always full) and lightly scented powder blue Charmin™ bathroom tissue.
I remember exactly what happened because I had to explain it all to my grandfather. I remember standing in front of him as he stared at me intently, eyes narrowed, lips tightly pursed.
This is pretty much exactly what I told him:
I was in the tub and everything was ok and I hadn’t touched any of the things I wasn’t supposed to touch, but then I had something in my eye and my hands were wet and I wanted to wipe my face but the towel was over by the door so I got a little bit of the blue bath tissue and wiped my eye with it,
but the water make it melt and it dissolved in the water.
So I got another piece of paper, this one was bigger so it would stay together, and I wiped my eye with it, but it started to dissolve too, but then I noticed that the dissolved paper just stayed floating on the top of the water, and when I put my hand under the water and pulled it up it would cover my hand with blue.
But I still hadn’t wiped my eye yet
so I got another piece, this one was actually pretty big, because I was blinking a lot because my eye was kind of stinging, and I wiped my eye. But I couldn’t reach the trash to put the paper in and I didn’t want to clog the toilet so I kept it in the tub and I knew that Grandma wanted me to answer her when she called so I listened very carefully even when my head was underwater and I jumped up and answered her every time.
Then when the bath was over I ran my hand over the top of the water a lot to make sure I had gotten all of the dissolved paper and it wouldn’t clog the drain and I squeezed all the water out of it and then put it in the garbage can in the kitchen so that I wouldn’t mess up the bathroom.
And that was it.
And that WAS it. Except those times I had ducked underwater to be The Man From Atlantis™ (7PM Thursdays on NBC) meant (of course) that my head dipped below the surface of the water : and every time I emerged I embedded dissolved Charmin™ paper pulp into my totally authentic 1970’s AFRO.
My grandfather later admitted that his expression during my confession was not due to the severity of my crime, but the fact that my entire head was now bright blue and he was barely holding in his laughter.
After my bath, I had gone to the kitchen to have a cookie, waiting for my grandmother to be proud that I’d cleaned up so well, which DID happen but was interrupted by her full throated scream at my Accidental Smurfification.
She tried to comb it out. It wasn’t happening. Spray paint would have been less adhering.
She said she’d just have to cut all of my hair off, and she would have too, if I hadn’tta made a run for it (the power cord was only so long) –
– and in the end, that’s what pushed her over the edge. The running. That’s when she decided that my grandfather should give me the spanking.
My mom was going to be there in a little bit, but Grandma was absolutely apoplectic, so in a spirit of “happy wife / happy life” Grandpa told me to go out to the backyard TO CUT MY OWN SWITCH.
I took a few psych classes in college. I’ve watched various PBS specials, read a little bit of Freud, a little more of Jung. Never in all my studies have I seen this particular process properly broken down and examined for the truly hellish mind twister that it is. Having been warned to “get a good one”, I measured every merit of the twigs from the bush I was sent to. Too thin would certainly move FASTER, and too thick would feel like a baseball bat.
My grandfather said that he laughed silently on the porch, tears streaming down his eyes, his eldest grandchild awash in horticultural terror in his backyard, blue hair blazing in the late afternoon sun.
I came back with a two foot long choice with few burrs, prepared to meet my fate. I got one swat and was sent to apologize (again) to my grandmother, who was mostly fretting about what to say to my mother when she arrived.
But my mom was already used to me at this point. Together we had conducted a series of experiments about solutions where we dissolved salt and sugar in water, then suspended a string in the sugar water and made rock candy. So my fascination, and my explanation, sort of made sense to her.
She looked at my hair a bit wearily and was very glad it hadn’t been cut off completely, but we went home she cut it a bit shorter, and then I sat on the floor in front of her while she meticulously used the smallest comb in the house to tease out as much of the bright blue as possible.
It was summer, after all, and no one was going to see it.
Except maybe the folks at church.
