My parents believed in physically disciplining me so that I’d grow up to be a decent and respectful person. Some people don’t believe in disciplining their children the way that I got disciplined, and every family has their own way of doing things. To each their own. Now that I’m older, I can understand and appreciate why my parents did what they did. I’m thankful for the way that they disciplined me because I needed it in order to become a person that my parents could be proud of raising.
My house is essentially a museum off my ass beatings. There are still some marks on our walls from when my father swung and missed me with his belt. I used to dodge that belt the way Floyd Mayweather dodged Pacquiao. I ran all over the house trying to avoid getting disciplined, and I had a couple of strategies that would at least delay the inevitable.
One strategy was to run and hug my mom whenever my dad announced that he was about to go get his belt. This was a great strategy because I knew he’d never swing on me if I was next to my mom because he didn’t want to hit her. This always backfired though because my mom would push me away from her like she didn’t love me anymore, which left me vulnerable to attack.
A second strategy that I loved to use was to run upstairs to my room and tear all the sheets and the quilt off of my bed, hide in the corner, and pile all the covers up on top of me. The extra cushioning would protect me up until the point when I lost the tug of war with my father. He’d rip the covers off of me, and the belt whipping would begin.
When I was eight years old, everything changed. My dad upgraded from a belt to a thick wooden paddle. It was about two inches thick and a foot and a half long — big enough to inflict pain, but small enough to be swung with speed. Everything got more organized, and I couldn’t run and hide anymore. When it was time to get spanked with the paddle, my dad always made me stand in the middle of the living room. If I tried to run, hide, or argue, I only got more strokes added, so I usually complied pretty quickly just to get it over with. The paddle hurt worse than the belt, but at least I only got hit in one spot rather than all over my body.
When I was 14 years old, I started to think I was a man — I was feeling myself a little bit. That little bit ended up being way too much because I thought that since I was a grown man, I wasn’t about to let my Pops hit me anymore. I remember one time when he tried to paddle me, and I just told him “No” straight up. I wasn’t about to get whupped with that paddle anymore. He got up in my face, which scared me, but I didn’t back down. With a quickness I’ve never seen in my dad before, he punched me in chest before I even had the chance to react. All the breath went out of my lungs, and I swear I couldn’t breathe for at least 30 seconds. I’ve never been hit so hard since.
A year later, when I was 15, I wasn’t about to let my Dad catch me slipping again. I was bigger and stronger than I’d ever been, so I was feeling more like a man than I ever had before. One time, we were at my Aunt’s house, and I somehow got in trouble right after dinner while everyone was still sitting at the table. Because we weren’t at home, my dad didn’t have his normal paddle, so he tried to use one of my Aunt’s wooden cutting boards. He tried to hit me with it, but it snapped in half once it hit me. Something about a wooden cutting board being broken off on me was just more than I could bear in that moment, and I got angry. I ended up wrestling with my dad all over the house. We started in the kitchen and ended up breaking the dinner table. We made a huge hole in the wall in the hallway, and finished in the living room rolling on the floor. After that, the whole thing is a blur, but I’m pretty sure I never got paddled again. From there on out, my punishments were the typical kind where I got grounded or got my phone taken away, and those normal types of discipline were much better.
I’ve been beaten in front of friends, dragged by my jersey out of baseball games, and had my dad pull the car over just to hit me a few times. When I was in fifth grade, I got whupped everyday before school. EVERY SINGLE DAY! The amazing part is that in the 45 minutes between me waking up and leaving for school, I managed to shower, get dressed, eat breakfast, get whupped, wipe my tears away, and still make it to school on time everyday.
These days, when I talk about the discipline I’ve received, people tend to be horrified and appalled. They ask me if I was abused as a child. I wasn’t. I probably deserved about 90 percent of the discipline that I’ve received over the years, and the extra 10 percent makes up for all the things that I never got in trouble for doing. (My parents were good, but they didn’t catch me all the time!) I joke about all of these stories now because they’re funny in retrospect. They were never funny at the time, but that’s usually how things like this go. Time allows perspective, and I’m extremely thankful to my parents for their discipline. I was a hard-headed, smart-mouthed, rebellious kid growing up, and if I hadn’t been disciplined in the manner that I was, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. As my father always told me, he disciplined me for my own good and because he loved me — to keep me from ending up dead or in jail, and I think he achieved what he set out to do.
Do you have any funny or memorable stories about getting disciplined as a kid? Tell me about them in the comments. I’d love to hear them!
