by B Smith

Created on: April 12, 2011

Humor: Attitude adjustments

I was a kid! I mean what else do you expect from me? My Dad would take the family, my Mom, brother, and I to dinner at either Roma’s Pizzeria or Colonel’s in Flint, Michigan. And I did what kids at the age of five or six do: Drive my Dad nuts.

He would stop drinking his fifth cup of coffee, look at me and ask, “Bryan, do you want to go to the bathroom?” Now I promise you, he was not asking me because I was doing the bathroom dance, you know, looking like I had to go pee. He was asking if I wanted a spanking because I was acting up (See the first three words of this article). My answer was ALWAYS no!

Well, you know what happened don’t you? Usually in less than five minutes of him asking that stupid question I was taken to the bathroom. Okay, so now I am in a place that I did not want to be facing something that I did not want to get – a spanking. I knew it was going to hurt. I knew the man would not stop until I cried. It was a WAR! (I never won.) Now my brother mind you, was a wimp. He would get two swats and start bawling. It might be because he was three years younger than me, perhaps my Dad felt sorry for him, or perhaps because he was smarter than I was whatever. Me? I was not going to cry and I don’t care what he brought with him.

These battles were legendary. He actually spanked me fifteen times once and then I cried. And I cried. I mean after all, I probably should have cried after five swats, but no! I was stubborn. After it was through, he would shake his hand like one does when they get a writing cramp. I got some satisfaction in knowing that his hand hurt – He-He!

So now it is over, right? Wrong. He finally got what he wanted – me to cry. He probably forgot what I was being spanked for and I certainly didn’t remember. But now we have a problem. I am crying and making noise and that is one thing he did not want me to make – noise. So this man, by the way I really do love him, which spent the last five minutes trying to make me cry would look at me and say, “Bryan, we are going back to the table so you need to stop crying now.”  My six year old mind couldn’t put together the right kind of response but if I could it probably be something like, “Are you serious or are you crazy? You just got me to cry and you want me to what?!? Be quiet? Surely you have lost your mind!”

So out to the table we would go and I would jump into Mommy’s lap and hug her and cry softly. And the process would start all over the next time we went out to eat!

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