Punishments you will never forget

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I was 17 and I went to see A Clockwork Orange with my boyfriend. Well, this entailed being out past curfew (which my parents strictly enforced until the EXACT MINUTE I turned 18.

Well, “Fuck them”, I thought to myself. I went to the movies with my boyfriend and came waltzing in like the queen of fucking sheba at about 12:30. My father TOOK OFF HIS SLIPPER AND SPANKED ME WITH IT. I was so humiliated and pissed that I didn’t speak to him for a couple weeks. And we were really close, so this was very hard for me to do.

I had a habit of pushing it past the limit a lot with them. My middle name was, “You’re Grounded.”

22

Once on a spring girl scout campout, my friend Lisa sneaked some homemade wine from home in her bag. She brought it out in the tent that night to show us. My friend Sam had several sips. I just had one. One sip.

Somebody told on us. They called the three of us to an evening meeting where we had to stand before the leaders and confess to this. They decided the punishment, for all three of us, was to not go on the big August trip that we went on each year. It was something that the entire troop worked towards all year, raising money by selling concessions at horse shows and the like.

I was humiliated to be caught but also angry, because I didn’t bring the stuff. As it turns out, for the rest of the summer Lisa, the guiltiest one, put in a lot of hours working on concessions. I couldn’t, because I babysat and had art classes. In the end, they relented and let HER go. Sam and I were still barred.

The great thing is, Lisa went on to work for the Girl Scouts nationally (as an adult) as a fundraiser and such. She was always a great scout. I just resented them punishing us all the same–and then lightening the punishment for the person most at fault.

23

My father had just poured a concrete slab for a patio behind the house. Everyone was warned to stay away from it. A neighbor kid (think Eddie Haskell) liked to get others in trouble was over and told me, my year younger brother and a cousin the cement was dry and we could run on it to try it out. And they did. I just tapped it with my toe to see if it was still wet. Yep. 5 minutes later my dad comes out and sees footprints all over his new slab. My brother and cousin new they screwed up and ran in the house. My dad asked who ran on the slab and the neighbor said I did it. My dad looked at the bottom of my shoes, grabbed a piece of 2x4 and started beating me with it. My mom had to physically restrain my dad to get him to stop. When he threatened my mom with the 2x4, my aunt who was visiting hit my dad in the back of the head with a shovel. About 10 years later my dad was arrested when a cop saw him hitting my brother with a rake. He was a real sweetheart when it came to dealing out punishment.

One of the best things I ever did was burn a razor strap my dad used to spank us kids. It was always hung on the wall just above the household garbage. It was my turn to take the garbage out to the burning barrel so I put the razor strap in with the trash. I made sure the fire got nice and hot and watched the strap melt. A few weeks later my brother was told to go get the strap. Of course it was gone, my dad spent an hour looking for it. Shortly after that my mom through my dad out, I still remember us kids upstairs getting excited knowing our father would no longer be living with us.

24

In fourth or fifth grade, there was a rule during lunch that if a monitor blew a whistle, everyone had to stop talking. One day, a friend of mine asked me if I could get the top off of her thermos right when silence was called. I couldn’t get it, so I turned to her and shook my head, but I didn’t say a word. Next thing I know, I was being told to go stand at the wall after I was done eating until lunch was over. I protested, but that got me exactly nowhere. I was very upset, because I always followed the rules at school. I was crying instead of eating, but of course the monitor just told me if I wasn’t going to eat to go ahead and stand at the wall. To this day, injustice in any form really riles me.

25

Punishments, huh? Oh well, let’s see, I have a ton of stories, not that I was a bad kid or anything…okay, maybe I was…

There was the time when I was about 8 and had done something that was going to result in a spanking. My dad went to get “The Switch” and as soon as he turned his back, I was out the front door and running at full-speed across the yard, yelling like a banshee that my dad was going to kill me. Never once crossed my mind that my dad was not only twice as big as me but also twice as fast.

When I was 17 and finally had my own car, I got grounded on a weekly basis. I also had a blatant disregard for being grounded. My dad’s inventive way to keep me home? Taking the distributor cap out of my car. I figured that out pretty quickly, though, and bought a spare one. After that, he just removed a tire.

When I was grounded, I was often also “phone grounded”, meaning I couldn’t talk on the phone at all and my phone was taken out of my room. Of course, I’d sneak the phone from the kitchen into my room late at night to make my calls. When my parents caught on, they removed every single phone receiver in the house and hid them while they were out of the house.

This tale pales in comparision, but still sticks out in my mind. Then there was the time in 4th grade at lunch when everyone at my table decided to see who could mix up the nastiest combination–I mixed lima beans, salt, pepper, ketchup, french fries, apple pie and chocolate milk together. Then our teacher came over to the table to see what we were all laughing at and made me EAT that. Bleech.

26

Holy crap racer if you hadn’t written that with such a straight face… well, straightforward style, I would swear it’s made up. Man, that sucks.

Oh, we’re going to talk about unfair punishment!

It was my 13th birthday and we lived in Germany (my parents worked for the U.S. Army over there). My best friends were three German girls who lived in my neighborhood. I went to school at the American school in post housing and had a few friends at school, too. Anyway, my mom said I could have a birthday party so I invited the three German girls and ten American girls from school. The hour of the party arrived and the only girls at my house were my German neighbors. An hour later, they were still the only girls there. I started crying because I realized just then that no one at school liked me. The German girls were very sympathetic.

Mom dragged me to my bedroom, grabbed my brush and whaled on the back of my thighs with it, all the while yelling at me to stop crying. It didn’t work.

Flash-forward to last year. I’m in Texas with my family for my grandfather’s memorial service; my brother and I get to reminiscing. I tell him the birthday story.

“I remember that. I laughed my ass off.”

I wasn’t very nice to my brother back then but MAN you would think he would sympathize a little!

27

I have been punished fairly harshly in my time, but as others have said here, the time that has stuck in my head is the single time my grandmother ever raised a finger to me. I had been swining myself out into the street on her front gate all day, had been told a hundred times that day, and a thousand times on other days not to do it. Eventually granny snapped and gave me a smack on the leg that I swear to god would not knock the dust of a feather. I screamed like a stuck pig and have never, ever forgotten it. Never swung on the gate again either I can tell you.

Another that has stuck with me is being punished in “low babies”, so at the age of maybe 5? One of my baby-teeth had fallen out and I asked a friend for a tissue to wipe up the blood and wrap the tooth in. She was the kinda kid that always had tissues, even at that age. I got put in the corner for “chattering” :rolleyes:
I swear, that has totally coloured my experience with the educational system.

28

Hmmm.
My parents aren’t big on the punishing thing. They’re not very good at it.
I remember being spanked by my father when my sister and I sat on the roof once…the one and only time he ever spanked us, and only because he was terrified we’d fall. He was so upset he bought us dolls to apologise.

The impression I got?
Daddy is a soft touch :slight_smile:

My mother used a strap (actually the dog’s lead) to slap my hand once…but to be fair I had just hit my sister on the head with a poker…

29

Hrm, I remember being made to snort a pinch of ground black pepper once when I was a really obnoxious snot to my mom.

Woooo, them sinuses were cleaned out for hours.

30

When I was four, my parents - keep in mind this was the permissive seventies - left me in the car alone while they ran into a store.

I was supposed to stay in the back seat, the car was parked on an upward incline… of course I immediately hopped in the front and threw the car into reverse. Following the laws of physics, the car ended up in the middle of a very busy road. Luckily the car wasn’t hit and stopped when it hit the curb. Thinking quickly, I got back into the back seat and pretended I didn’t know what had happened. IIRC, I blamed it on a bird.
That was the only time my father ever spanked me, but I will never forget it. He made me get his belt to be spanked.

31

Every single last one of them. They were all perfectly justified, and I knew exactly what was happening and why.

I had great parents.

32

I sometimes think my mother was the world’s greatest child psychologist.

I recall a punishment for misbehaving was to sit in the middle of the living room floor until she told me I could get up.

This was an amazingly effective punishment. Enforced stillness, in which I actually thought about what I’d done that was naughty. And the itching to get up and move, and knowing I couldn’t until she said so. Because she was the mom.

Brilliant.

33

Wait, your mom beat you with a hair brush because you wouldn’t stop crying about the stuck-up American girls not coming to your party? Man, that is cold.

34

Okay, my parents goofed a few times.

My bratty little sister hit this “want’s to learn to cook” phase when she was twelve or so. She was limited to things like Jello[sup]TM[/sup] and whatnot when Mom wasn’t around. Now, you have to realize that I’m piecing this together from sketchy evidence that’s 20+ years old.

One day my Mom came home, and there was lemonade on the ceiling in the kitchen. Steve was at baseball practice, so the only two possible culprits were me and Annemarie. I was, as usual for that season, up in my room reading a book. My sister got to my Mom first, and laid a “look what Dave did” story on her.

I got blamed for something I didn’t even know had happened, and I got some minor punishment that I don’t even remember for it. My sister finally owned up to it a couple of years ago at a family Fourth of July party.

I can’t be really mad at her, though. Sometime in late October she’s going to make me an uncle. :slight_smile:

Come to think of it, I got some screwed up punishments in school for crap I wasn’t really responsible for. Let me think about this.

35

Getting strangled because I didn’t clean the toilet properly.

F_X

36

Luxury!

  • Don’t worry, I won’t do the rest of the skit…
37

When I was in the 6th grade at the Lynnewood Elementary School, I was riding on the bus to school one fine morn. Our Bus Safety Monitor was a shrewish little prick who loved the tiny bit of power he had.

He told me to do something- who knows what?- and I said clearly to his face, " Fuck You ". Oh gosh, all the air was sucked out of that bus in that instant. He got to school and apparently told his teacher.

Less than an hour into the day, I’m called into the other 6th grade classroom. The one for the Smart Kids. I am interrogated by Miss Gerhardt, a spinster creature of spiteful eyes and hateful mannerisms. She said,

I stood there. And I stood.

And I stood, and stood and just for yucks and giggles, why I stood some more. I stood there for about 45 minutes. To an eleven year old boy, this is roughly the equivalent of 375,000 years.

Finally I whispered, " I said fuckyou ". She whirled around with what can only be described as a preternatural speed and said clearly and loudly,

( And yes, that’s my first name. Gonna make something of it? :smiley: ).

I said it out loud, and I experienced for the second time in 90 minutes that most rare of scientific phenomena, the Perfect Vaccuum. My face was burning, I thought I was going to be sick and I had the disgusting gaze of her entire cadre of little brilliant above-average kids.

It was awful. I have never forgotten it. Luckily for me it hasn’t stopped me from employing that phrase with terrific results at choice moments. :wink:

Cartooniverse

38

When I was 9 years old my mother remarried. I was a good quiet kid and he hated me on sight. He hated me because my mother loved me. I had hair down to my waist and he took me to a barber shop and had it cut like a boy’s because I refused to call him Daddy.

He grounded me the day school was out until the day school started one year.

He tried to smother me with a pillow.

He made me write the meaning of “respect” 1000 times at least once a week.

He went to hit me one time and missed and his fist went through my bedroom wall and through the hall wall.

When I was 11 he came home drunk and started in on me and I pushed him off the front porch. His leg was broken in 3 places.

When I was 14 I left home. I told my mother she could live in that shit if she wanted to but I had had enough.

To this day she says she just wanted me to have a normal childhood.

39

My most memorable punishment is a little different. I don’t remember what we’d done but two of my brothers and I had transgressed somehow and Mom came after us en masse with a belt. We fled to the corner of the family room and she aimed swats at each of us. Much crying ensued. Thing is, she actually missed me and smacked the floor next to me with the belt. She apparently never noticed and I, of course, shrieked and cried as realistically as I could. I’ve told the family about this since. My brothers are a little miffed but Mom’s cool. (She’s really a very nice lady, but six kids can fray your nerves a little.)

40

I was a ridiculously good kid, and the worst thing I ever did was break curfew. (My sister more than made up for me, though, she sure got more mileage out of our mutual nonagression pact than I did!) So I was grounded a couple of times for that.

The funniest, though, had to be when I was 21 fucking years old, a couple of months after I graduated college. I’d been out of the house for years, was going to be leaving for a semester in Russia in a couple of weeks, and I had gone to the Bristol Rennaisance Faire with some friends. Well, to make a long story short, I hit it off with a strolling troubador, discovered he lived half a mile from me, and he got my number and asked me out the following week.

After a couple of dates, things were getting interesting, and one night we made plans to go out and I had a hunch I was going to be out really, really late. Mom asked me for his name, address, and phone number, which I gave her, and made me promise her that I’d be escorted home (neither he nor I had a car). I agreed, and it was a weeknight (we both had to work the next morning), and I told her not to wait up for me.

Well, I got home about 3 a.m., having been escorted most chivalrously by bicycle, as promised. I went upstairs, and there was Mom, butt-naked, squinting, and VERY pissed off. Few things are funnier than my mom trying to look threatening when she is naked and half-asleep.

“Where have you been?” she screamed. “I’ve been worried about you!” “Mom, I left you the number and told you not to wait up for me. What’s the problem?” “Are you going to tell me that guy escorted you home, watched you lock up your bike in the basement, and escorted you to the front door and watched you walk up the stairs” Well, he had.

Mom’s response:“I don’t care! It’s dangerous outside in the middle of the night! You could have been hit by a car! You’re GROUNDED!” I told her I would just stay over at his place until the next morning if she was so worried about my safety. It was probably the first time I’d deliberately blown off my mom’s punishment. (I managed to make it to work on time the next morning; Mom played hooky, because she’d been up so late. So which one of us was more responsible?)