“Go git me a switch!”
If you are older, from the South, or lived in the country, you probably remember those words, and you knew you were going to get a whoopin'.
You did as you were commanded and were immediately faced with a dilemma: Do you get the thick switch or the thin, snapping switch?
They both hurt and both left welts, but they hurt in a different way. I preferred the thick switch.
Many times the switch came on the warm days when you were only wearing shorts. It did not matter. That switch went right to the skin, and the welts popped up immediately.
When I went into the orphanage, the switch changed to a paddle, a leather strap, or an oversized pizza peel.
In the 7th grade, I had a very young, attractive teacher who was a couple of inches shorter than I was. She gave me a choice: stay after school and write “I will not...” for an hour, or take three whacks with her oversized paddle.
I chose the paddle.
I bent over, and she wound up with both hands like Hank Aaron and whacked me big time. Holy Moses! But it was too late to change my mind.
In the orphanage, I got the paddle once with four or five other boys. I don't remember what we were doing, but our house parent didn't like it and gave each of us five whacks with a wooden paddle about the size of a pickleball racquet.
That one didn't hurt, and we all roared with laughter because one boy farted loudly every time he was hit.
I still laugh when I think about it.
The last time I was punished in the orphanage, I was working with the campus gardener. He gave me an area to clear out, and I was actually proud of what I had done. When he inspected it, however, he took me into a shed and gave me three whacks with a leather strap.
He was the only one, I think, who was actually angry. For the others, it was simply the duty or the job.
Looking back now, I can't imagine anyone raising children that way today. And I'm certainly not suggesting we should go back to it.
But it was a different time.
We didn't have cell phones, video games, or social media. We had switches, paddles, leather straps—and a pretty good supply of stories to tell when we got old.
And somehow, despite all those whacks, most of us survived.
What did you get when you were growing up—a switch, a paddle, or something even worse?
Because of negative comments from NextDoor I wrote a footnote..-----------Because of comments I will add a footnote. My daughter is now 58 but when she was 18 months or 2 she did "something bad" I talked to her and pulled her diaper down just a little and taped ( I mean taped - not even a sound) her rear end and pulled the diaper back up. She looked at me, puckered up and wailed for over an hour ! Never again.. My son was maybe 4 and he bit a kid. I set him down in front of me and gave him a quiet lecture and at the end I asked.. "What do you say"? He looked at me and said "Can I have an ice cream?"
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