I am the first born child of my family, and for my first eight years, I was the only child. This explains a lot about the way I was parented. My parents were a lot stricter with me than they are with my little brothers. I think they gradually chilled out as they realized that creating the perfect child was not possible.

But I was parented during the dark ages, when getting in trouble meant a spanking. During these times, my dad would sometimes threaten to beat me with a stick if I ever acted up during school. I didn't know if these threats were serious, and I tried my best to not find out.

Try as I might, however, trouble always seemed to find me. Why? Because I was a really weird little kid. Growing up without siblings, I guess I needed to find ways to entertain myself. Consider my memories from my sixth year on earth:

I remember finding a large box of Styrofoam packaging and grinding it into a considerable volume of static-y particles, and then tossing it all over my neighbor's front lawn, yelling "It's snowing!"

I remember getting up, butt naked, at the crack of dawn and flashing joggers on the road from my front door.

I remember sneaking into the women's restroom at church. When a woman came out of a stall I said, mustering my best look of surprise, "Oh... this isn't for boys?" and I ran out the door.

In first grade, I used to take ketchup packets from lunch and carry them around with me so that I could snack on them during the day. One day, I pulled one of these packets out during rug time. (At rug time, our teacher Mrs. Korth instructed us to sit 'Indian style' on the carpet so that she could read to us. No one in our class was Native American.)

For some reason, I was upset that my ketchup packet was wrinkly. In order to smooth it out, I placed it under my butt and started massaging the packet against the carpet.

Mrs. Korth said, "Mark, what are you doing?"

I said, "Oh nothing."

Mrs. Korth said, "Mark, stand up please."

I didn't know why, but I could tell that Mrs. Korth did not like what I was doing to the ketchup packet. As I stood up, I quickly grabbed the ketchup packet from under my butt and tried to hide it. I didn't have enough time.

Mrs. Korth said, "Come here and show me what's in your hand."

I walked over to the front of the carpet where she was sitting, and I showed her the ketchup packet.

"You were trying to break open the ketchup packet on my carpet, weren't you?" asked Mrs. Korth.

I wanted her to think I was honest, so I lied.

"Yes," I said.

She walked me over to the cabinet and she pulled out a small square pink paper. The paper said:

Name: ___________

What did you do? ____________________________

How did that make Mrs. Korth feel? (Circle one.)
:-) :-| :-(

Mrs. Korth bent over to my height and spoke to me eye to eye. As I listened to her long lecture about considering others, I took the opportunity to look down Mrs. Korth's shirt. After concluding, she said, "Please fill this out and have it signed by one of your parents." My dad's threat echoed through my head. I certainly did not want to be beaten with a stick.

I started sniffling as I filled out her stupid form. By the time I circled the frowny face, I had worked out the exact shape and size of the stick in my head and I started bawling.

Mrs. Korth could not console me. "It's okay, I'm not that mad," she said. Did she even know that I was going to be beaten with a stick because of her?! After thirty minutes, I was still going strong, and I had become something of a distraction for the rest of the class. Mrs. Korth sent me to the main office.

The main office people thought it was best to let me speak with my dad. They called him up.

"Hello?" he said.

The front office lady said, "Yes, we're here with your son, he wont stop crying so we thought you should speak to him."

I quickly yelled, "Daddy don't beat me with a stick!"

The office got quiet.

"What, of course I won't!" he said. I guess he knew that in America, it wasn't socially acceptable to beat your six year old with a stick.

"Oh okay." I said. I was relieved. I instantly stopped crying.

The front office lady said "... uh, thank you." and hung up. I went back to class, happy as can be.

At the end of the day, I was in the car with my dad on the way home. Reluctant to change his parenting style, he said, "If you ever get into trouble at school again, I'm going to beat you with a stick!"

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