Spank Me Baby!

Spanking… Some do it, some don’t.

But at some point in your parental lives you’ll be forced to make that decision. And even after you make that decision those little bastards will push you so far that you might just re-think it.

Now, I’m not even about to stand proud on my soap box, pound my chest and make a public stance on this issue.

Instead, I’m going to guide you on a little jaunt back-in-time to my childhood to discuss wooden spoon, hair brushes, and belts – oh my!

Why? Because my parents were huge believers of spanking.

My mother was a wooden spoon kind of lady. It was her weapon of choice.

Originally my brother and I thought she mistakenly grabbed one while reaching for a knife, but now we’re pretty confident the stealth speed of the spoon as it sliced through the air, landing effortlessly on our young butt’s just milliseconds before we dodged her thrashing arm was what sold our mother on the dreaded spoon of wood.

Regardless, she was a ninja master with it.

And no matter what room in the house we were in, there was always a wooden spoon hidden somewhere:

• Bathroom spraying water on my brother as he brushed his teeth – WHAP! a wooden spoon across the ass.
• Watching cartoons with my brother and accidentally saying “shit” loud enough for my mother to hear – WHAP! a wooden spoon across the legs and bar of Lava soap in the mouth.
• Mumbling under my breath “I hate you and wish you were dead” after my mother spanked me with a wooden spoon – (sound effect of spoon flying through the air like a throwing star) WHAP! a wooden spoon on the back.

She had skills.

Every now and then my brother (@ibeenorm on Twitter) and I would push her to the point where we’d turn and find her frazzled, raging, and holding a single wooden spoon in hand donning a “let’s dance motherfuckers!” look on her face.

Our reaction was always to put our hands behind our butts and scatter in opposite directions. It was our impulse.

And like a true lioness she always went after the weaker, slower one. But looking back, the smart move would have been to let her hit me first every time because once the initial hunt was over, she would then call the other kid who got away and he’d have to stand there and take it.

Afterward, we’d inevitably end up in the bathroom, bent over comparing black-and-blue wooden spoon marks on each other’s asses to see who would be declared the gold in Olympic Wooden Spoon Dodging.

My father? His weapon of choice was the blue hair brush or a belt. And to make matters worse, he was a lazy spanker.

He was a do-it-yourself vicious spanking machine. All that was required was a crying, shaking child and a weapon.

Many-a-time he’d come home, look at my report card, scream and yell, then say the words we always dreaded to hear: “go get the hairbrush.”

There was no need to argue, no need to negotiate…you were about to get your ass beat.

So you make the long walk up the stairs, sniffling, kicking yourself for being in this situation, and making last minute pleas with any god who will listen that he “please slam our house with a massive meteorite stat!!”

I’d slowly walk back in, hand him the brush and then wait for the second most-hated phrase to be uttered: “take down your pants and underwear.”

The humility of having to drape yourself over your father’s knee, bare-ass sticking in the air, waiting for all hell to break loose was enough to make you want to become a saint for the rest of your life.

But we never learned our lessons. Despite the knowledge of our mother hoarding at least three-dozen wooden spoons sporadically around the house, and our father’s keenness to play our bare-asses like a snare drum with his hairbrush, my brother and I continued to raise holy hell.

We continued to take lashings over the years for some of the dumbest things we had under our control to just simply not do. We were like moths to a flame.

Even today when I’m walking through a store and see a wooden spoon on display I have the sudden urge to pop my brother on the back of the head and call him a “punk.”