My father owned a Hot Shot Cattle Prod for, obviously, his cows. I’m not sure what the voltage was but it was smaller than the 9,000 volt ones on the ads, so I’m going to assume it was about 5,000 volts. That’s still more than twice the juice used in an electric chair (though presumably you’re not going to run it through somebody’s shaved and sponge soaked head for several minutes).
When I was little, probably about six, my brother and I were waiting in the car while my father tended to a sick cow. For whatever reason we, as boys will do, got into an argument that became a fight. My brother was twice my age and twice my weight so it wasn’t going well for me. I knew what the cattle prod was and I’d been told never to use it, but I honestly thought it had a voltage (not that I knew the word voltage) like a joy buzzer or a lamp-with-a-short in it- something unpleasant but not really harmful. Needless to say I grabbed the Hot Shot and hot shot my brother.
He screamed, then he got out of the car and just stood there acting confused, and then sank to his knees, and I was absolutely terrified. I thought I had killed him. I screamed for my father, I jumped out of the car, I kept thinking "Oh my God I killed him! I’m Cain! I didn’t mean to kill him! Shit I’ll never get that new GI Joe!” My father came running, and it all seemed like it took forever. My father was cursing a blue streak, took off his suit jacket (yes, he wore a suit when he was dealing with cows) and put it over him afraid he was in shock, my brother just kept mumbling and acting strange and I was crying. It was a not good very bad day.
Then my brother came around again. And he realized what had happened. And he had never really liked me much before (he had and has major Middlechild Syndrome and I was a much littler and much cuter little boy so it wasn’t in the stars, though at the moment the fault lay not in our stars but in my father’s cattle prod). I still remember- he got a feral look on his face and charged- my father couldn’t catch him, I started running but he had longer legs, and I knew I was in for the asskicking of asskickings. So two lessons from this day:
- Shocking your 12 year old brother with a 5,000 volt cattle prod is a very nasty and bad thing to do and it deserves- I would even say demands- swift and terrible retribution. Even for a six year old it is careless, irresponsible and absolutely inexcusable. Even so…
- To brutally assault your kid brother who is half your age, half your size, half your weight, who is very truly and sincerely terrified and ashamed and remorseful for what he has done, who is already in terrible trouble with your parents and knows it, who is pitifully begging your forgiveness, who is wishing with all fiber of his being he had never done it, who knows that you are capable of and have intention of clobbering him, and who is still holding the 5000 volt cattle prod that he now knows will not kill you, is just fucking stupid.
When my brother fell out from his second 5,000 volts my father just said an expletive, shook his head and said something like “I sure as hell saw that one coming… reckon why David didn’t? He’s the smart one.”
The Verdicts:
- In the matter of the first shocking it was determined that I was truly repentant and had learned my lesson and that emotionally I had punished myself, so I was let go with a mild “em-bare-ass-ing” token spanking, having the b/w TV removed from my room and not being allowed to watch the color TV in the den for some period of time.
- In the matter of the teasing and taunting and fighting that provoked the shock it was determined that my brother was at fault but the 5,000 volts were more than sufficient punishment.
- In the matter of the second shocking it was determined that I was not guilty due to self defense in the matter of clear and present danger due to the height, age and weight differential.
- In the matter of my brother’s assault it was determined that he was a) not guilty by reason of insanity and that b) the second 5,000 volts was more than sufficient punishment.
The Parental Court further ordered that my brother and I were not to be together in a room or anywhere else without at least one parent present as the probability of retaliatory strikes was far too real. Of course in a large house on a large farm this isn’t altogether feasible, and so my brother struck a few days later and being the larger and the more athletic it didn’t go well for me. I of course did what any six year old would do which was approach my mother and sing like Sammy Davis, Jr., whereupon my brother was duly punished with a more than token spanking for beating up somebody smaller than him.
More than thirty years later my brother still tells his yuppie puppie kids “Y’all think I’m strict and unreasonable? When I was a kid your damned uncle tried to kill me with a cattle prod twice on the same day and I’M the one who got a whipping!”
The point: I hate revisionism.
