Stories From The Fam: Did I ever tell you about how…

My parent’s diplomacy left me The Mark?

Preamble

Diplomacy you say? My parents would never punish us individually (being the key word) without direct evidence. In fact, we were actually seldom punished. My Mother said she didn’t believe in grounding us because she would only be punishing herself by being trapped in the house with whiney kids. Anyway, if something went awry in the house (e.g. a curtain had been mysteriously cut with scissors), they would look for evidence. If there wasn’t any evidence, they would ask us each if we had done “it”. I would almost always say “it wasn’t me”, as would my sister.

Then came the negotiations. We were ordered to the bathroom, the very place we would later be spanked, in order to determine the identity of the culprit. The agreement was that if we couldn’t decide on our own, we would BOTH be spanked. I have no idea what kind of strange social lesson this was intended to be, but the negotiations would usually go something like this:

Sister: Well, I did it, but I’m not telling.
Me (a.k.a. The Mark): (sob) but, if you don’t we’ll both get spanked.
Sister: I know, but I’m not going to admit it. There’s no sense in us both getting spanked. How about this: you take it this time and I’ll take it next time.
Me: Ok, you’re right there’s no sense in us both getting spanked, I’ll take it this time and you take it next time. Deal?
Sister: Deal.

Make no mistake, this didn’t happen just once and as you might guess, the occasion where “she took hers” never happened. Take home point: I was an overly empathetic and possibly very stupid child.

This story is closely connected to another story (as they all are) involving a very honest child… remind me to tell you that one some other time…