Discipline

I remember receiving a few spankings here and there while growing up. Once was for repeatedly swinging from my grandmother’s bedpost. Another time was for not helping my siblings straighten up the house, and using an “I’m too young to clean up” excuse. I was even spanked by my third grade teacher for biting into a Halloween cupcake she handed to me inside the classroom after she clearly told me and my fellow classmates to eat our treats outside. (I wondered then, and I still wonder, why she didn’t just wait until we got outside to even give us the cupcakes in the first place.

For those of you old enough to actually remember the Cuban Missile Crisis (hello, Mom and Dad!) or for those who studied it in eighth grade history class (hello, the rest of us!), the following tale is epic along those lines.

When my husband was a child he was “the kid who wouldn’t go home.” The only child of a single working mother, he much preferred the after school company of the rowdy Nelson family down the street to the television alone at home. Shirley Nelson had been his babysitter when he was younger, but even when he was old enough to stay home alone, he migrated to the activity and fun of the five Nelson children in their large, rambling house. Fortunately, the Nelsons didn’t mind and enveloped him in as one of their own.