Good Old Fashion Punishment

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of the guys at my office yesterday. One of the guys was talking about a friend of his that had 4 kids who he said, and I quote, "are little redheaded hellions." He said that there mom was really good at making them behave. He said that when the kids would do something bad she would calmly walk over to the refrigerator and pull out a bottle of Tabasco sauce. She would put exactly one drop on their tongue and make them leave it there until they couldn't stand it anymore.

The other guy said that when he was little and his dad caught him and his brother telling a lie he made them sit at the kitchen table while he heated up a butter knife over the stove burner. When it was red hot he told them that he was going place it on their tongues and whoever cried first was the liar. He said all they did was sit there and watch their dad heating up the knife and they both started crying and confessed what they had done.

I commented that my silly parent simply spanked us. So my question is what happened to good old fashion punishment. What happened to good old Lava soap in the mouth as opposed to Tabasco.

I love Bill Engvall's take on spanking. On his Here's Your Sign CD, he talks about how when he was a little kid his dad would send him out to the tree in their yard to pick the switch he was going to be whipped with. He carries on this whole inner dialogue while is picking the switch. He talks about how if he picked one that was too small his dad would send him back out for a different one and if he picked one too big he would think....Well, that one will just break my back. I think anyone who grew up in the age when spanking was acceptable punishment can relate to this.

All this talk of spanking made me think about the time when my brother and I were little and I drew on my parents bedroom carpet with lipstick. I don't know why, it just seemed like a good thing to do at the time. When my mom found it she asked me who did and and I told her it was Steven. The next thing I know my brother is getting spanked and he is screaming the whole time. "I didn't do it! I didn't do it!" I later felt so guilty that I confess and got spanked twice as hard and as long as he did. My mom made me apologize to my brother and then she told him she was sorry but that she was sure he deserved it for something else.

Sorry Ste! If I ever have children you owe one of them a spanking!