Discipline...Grandpa style

Growing up I had my share of spankings and such. I grew up okay and don't seem to be damaged. That said, my grandpa had his very own way of getting us kids to behave.

Grandpa was a tolerant kind of man. He put up with kids jumping all over the place and hanging on him when he was outside working. He put up with us playing in the well-house, rearranging his boxes and jars of nails and other Grandpa stuff.

He refereed boxing matches, turned fist fights, between the kids making sure nobody really got hurt. He was really pretty easy-going until Saturday night wrestling was on and then, well, we'd better behave.

He would finally get fed up with the bickering or what ever nonsense us kids were up to at the time and then he'd holler at us. That was our one and only chance to knock it off. After that, he'd thump the floor.

His chair sat almost in the corner of the living room. On the right side of his chair was an end table and on the left, his spittoon.

After our one and only chance, those of us foolish enough to continue acting like apes, were summoned to the living room where Grandpa would thump the hardwood floor with his knuckle and tell us to sit down.

Being the oldest, wisest and fastest, I always got the spot between the end table and his chair, leaving the less desirable spittoon side to another sibling. Nobody wanted to sit on that side of the chair and I mean absolutely nobody.

I would sit on my side of his chair with the Reader's Digest I'd stuck under the end table and giggle at the gagging sounds coming from the other side. As a rotten kid I took great pleasure in the misery of my unlucky siblings.

Yesterday, the kids were cranky and constantly at each other. I found myself doling out discipline like my grandpa did.

I needed to get some fabric ready to wash and was serging the cut ends. I could hear the kids over the clacking of the serger and so I hollered at them. Into the third end of fabric the noise level had risen considerably so I summoned them both.

I put one in front of the door and the other in front of the dresser and told them to sit and be quiet. Nothing makes a kid more miserable than to be required to sit and not talk while under the watchful eye of an adult. They just can't help but squirm due to the discomfort. The pain of it is intolerable, to a child.

They dont' know how lucky they are I didn't have a stinky spittoon.