Spankings

Today I was talking to my grandmother about the good ol' days: when we were kids, when my mother and aunt were kids, when she and her brother were kids, when she had dogs and cats and they all did funny things. At one point she got to describing the amusing punishments she thought up for her children when they would quarrel: pretending to cancel vacations, revoking their TV privileges, not letting them play outside or swim when it was hot. And then she began to describe one incident when I was four years old when she had to punish me. This is the story as she told it (and as any adult might tell it).

Jaco was in a particularly grumpy mood: he was tired and hungry and kept crying about nothing. He was only two or three years old, so that's understandable. Ouma wanted to give him his lunch a few minutes early so he could go down for a nap, and then she and Oupa and I could eat together once he'd finished. At that time, we used to sit on the piano bench instead of the chairs because it was higher than the chairs were, and we could reach the table more easily that way. On this day in question, I kept wanting to get up on the bench with him, but Jaco didn't want me there, and kept trying to push me off. Ouma and Oupa told me that I had to wait, because we were going to eat a little bit later, but I wanted to sit by Jaco anyways. Tensions escalated and I kept refusing to listen, so then Oupa - who was probably one of the sweetest, most docile people I've ever known - gave me a good whack on the backside. I erupted into a gigantic fuss and Ouma yelled at me to go to my room until I'd stopped crying. I did go to my room, and I sat there under my blanket for a good long time. When Ouma came in a little while later to see if I'd stopped sulking yet, I told her to go away. Here Ouma says she lost her temper, came in, dug me out of the blankets and gave me a few more hard whacks on the backside, telling me again to stay in the room until I could come out and be respectful. About an hour, maybe more, went by before Ouma heard a small voice come into the kitchen: "Ouma, I'm hungry." And so she gave me my lunch, and I was "as sweet as a little angle" for the whole rest of our stay with them. When my parents called and were told the story, they just laughed asked if Ouma could fly over and come live with us for awhile. Moral of the story: hard discipline is completely worth it and its methods are undisputed.

She meant for me to agree with her now that I'm older. I disagree with her as firmly now as I did fifteen years ago.

Without a doubt, my attitude should not have been tolerated and I was not in the right. They shouldn't have let me sit with Jaco, and I should have obeyed them. But they also shouldn't have hit me or yelled. They should not have told me to go to my room until I had stopped crying. They should not have treated me as harshly as they did. They should not have forced me with hunger pains to submit. I felt as disdainful of this method of discipline now as I remember feeling then. I thought about what had happened for a long time in that hour or so before I came out to ask for food. I understood quite well what was going on.

A bit of background that's necessary is that I have a lifelong record of being both slightly obsessed with my little brother and a bit controlling of him. The controlling bit has lessened slightly over the years, but when I was four years old, I was the ruler of all our games, and Jaco loved playing with me anyways. Our personality types fit very naturally into that mold, whether it was right for me to be as bossy as I was or not. The other thing is that Jaco cried a lot, and the only way to cope with his constant crying was to lessen its importance. I knew that the only reason Jaco was crying was because he was grumpy and tired, not because he didn't particularly want me on the bench. He was just in the kind of mood where he'd push anyone that got too close to him. When we were kids, Jaco and I played together constantly. I knew him better than anyone: even my mother asked me to translate for her before he could speak properly, around this time. Normally, Jaco loved having me on the bench, because it was the kids' bench, and we ate together, and it was fun. Quite often, when Jaco threw temper tantrums, he would completely forget he was unhappy once I forced him cheer up. (Yes, as I said, I was very controlling, but it worked.) My plan was to crawl up on the chair next to him and hug him and then ask Ouma to bring me food early, too, so that we could have a Kid lunch and a Grown-Up lunch and then everything would be alright, and I wouldn't have to eat lunch with just the grown-ups. 'Cause then I'd have to wait forever for Ouma and Oupa to finish eating before I could go play outside, too. And that's boring.

I was completely shocked when Oupa spanked me. Never in my life had I seen Oupa angry about anything, and this was certainly not an instance in which I'd been naughty enough to expect him to break that reputation. I'll admit, it hadn't quite occurred to me how disrespectful I was being in the moment, because I had a plan and I was determined to carry it out, even if the grown-ups didn't understand what I was doing or why. In the moment, physical punishment seemed completely unprovoked, and I was more taken aback than I remember being very often as a child. I was confused and hurt and alone, because normally Oupa was on our side. If I remember correctly, Ouma had called Oupa in to deal with me, too, so I felt like he'd been turned to the dark side. All good had been lost. I didn't know what to do.

And because I was four, the first thing I thought to do was yell and frown and cry. Conflict resolution isn't too great at that age.

Sitting in my room a few minutes later, I was very ashamed. For some reason, it's always been my instinctual reaction to cover my face and keep anything from coming near me when I'm embarrassed, and so there I sat, under the blankets, crying. Another thing that's been constant since that age is that I have always hated crying. I remember feeling immature and vulnerable, like I should really get over myself and just listen to Ouma and be happy again, but I also felt as if I'd been exploited, as if some great injustice had been committed against me, as if I'd been tried and convicted without a lawyer. I remember feeling like I had no voice, like no one would ever understand, like evil had won and nothing could be done about it otherwise. I remember the pinkish glow under the blanket and how it got harder and harder to breathe as I sat there. And I was thinking, thinking, thinking, trying to get my head around what had happened. It was the shock that did that, not being sent to my room. That never does anything. I was just mad at Ouma, I wasn't trying to understand her, and I didn't think she was right. What got me was that I'd done something wrong (namely, disobeying her), and that I had received a punishment of a much greater magnitude than I deserved. The more I thought about it, the more tyrannical and the less rational it seemed to me. All I could have done to avoid punishment would have been to submit to the oppressor like Oupa had, and join the axis of evil. (At that point I'd stopped thinking about Jaco and what I'd been trying to do in the first place. It was war, and that's all that concerned me.) 

As I was wallowing in that moment of despair, growing more and more angry with her, she came in to ask if I wanted lunch. I told her to go away. I knew I was pushing it. I knew it would provoke her anger. But submitting to her would be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I couldn't do that.

I knew it would make her angry, but I hadn't thought far enough to consider that it would invoke more physical punishment. I couldn't see her coming, and her footsteps only gave me two seconds' warning. Before I knew it, she was on top of me, and my limbs were all bound by the blankets, so I couldn't get out in time to hit or kick her. (In retrospect, that was probably a blessing in disguise.) It didn't hurt at all. Especially as I got older, I almost always felt a disdainful sense of triumph after having been spanked, because I had a high pain tolerance and they thought they were punishing me. The triumph didn't come this time, though. I felt violated. My space had been invaded. I had been dehumanized. I was hurt, but the hurt was emotional, not physical.

At that point, everything crashed in. I stopped thinking, I stopped wondering what had happened, I completely forgot why I was angry. Everything exploded. I was burning with rage. It took what felt like an eternity for me to return to embarrassment that I'd thrown a temper tantrum like a 3-year-old.

Thinking back now, I imagine that feeling - the feeling of being forced to repent after a spanking - is the closest I'll ever get to understanding what it's like to be a broken criminal. It's fascinating for me to focus on that feeling now and compare it to other times I've felt that feeling; the most recent time was when I experienced Winston's time in the Ministry of Love vicariously through 1984. 2 + 2 = 5.   2 + 2 = 5.   2 + 2 = 5.   2 + 2 = . . .

It felt like a vacuum. I didn't know where to put my thoughts anymore. I couldn't bring myself to think about my friends or the flowers outside, or the birds, or the grass, or bugs, or anything happy. It was as though I'd forgotten why I was there in the first place, and I'd burned myself out of the anger. I was numb.

I was also hungry. The pangs in my stomach had started to set in, and my mind (as it had reverted to a completely blank pragmatic state at this point) turned to wondering whether Ouma was cruel enough to refuse me food if I asked. I figured that the worst that might happen would be to get spanked and sent back here again, and maybe I could run outside in time if that seemed to be the case. So I left the room, with greatest shame, and bowed before the feet of my enemy to ask for food. The enemy gloated for a bit, basking in the victory of my defeat, and then gave me my food in reward. 2 + 2 = 5.

Four-year-olds don't often hold grudges for long, especially against sweet grandmothers that laugh and smile and give you cookies and yummy juice and warm milk and extra desert. My grandmother is not a cruel person; I loved staying with her as a little kid. But I disagree with the traditional method of discipline she adheres to. Directly after she finished this story, she started telling me about one time she spanked her dog and it held a grudge against her for two whole days. I am uncomfortable with a worldview that makes connections between children and pets. I'm not going to say I have some brilliant alternative to offer. It would be unfair to ask me to provide one, because I haven't had children of my own and haven't spent very much time disciplining children of any kind. But I firmly believe that there is a way to do it without dehumanizing the child. 

I refuse to forget that children are human beings with souls and stories. I refuse to make my children animals. Kids are not pets. I have sworn since I was a child never to forget that. I swear again never to break that vow.