I remember being spanked only once when I was a kid. Oh, I was threatened with a spanking more times than I can count but an actual spanking? Just once. I was probably around nine years old. I wasn’t a bad kid; in fact, I was very well-behaved, shy and quiet. But I had four siblings that to my mind, were not nearly as well-behaved as me. I’m going to tell you about the one time I got caught up in a sordid chain of events that resulted in my getting spanked.
My older brother John (Johnny back then) was, I’m guessing, around twelve years old. If I was nine at the time, that would make my younger brothers Jeff (Jeffrey) and Jim (Jimmy) eight and five, respectively. We were the four main characters in this production.
If I remember correctly, it was either a Saturday or the early evening on a weekday. My dad was home fertilizing the lawn in the front yard with one of those roller thingies you push like a lawn mower. (They might call them fertilizers.) The three boys and I were just hanging out in the garage and on the driveway, alternating between watching my dad push the fertilizer and generally goofing off.
My dad hadn’t gotten more than three horizontal rows of grass covered with fertilizer when he was interrupted by my mom calling from the back door to the garage that he had a phone call.
“Listen,” Dad said as he turned from the fertilizer, leaving it on the lawn just at the beginning of a new row and began to make his way to the back door. “I don’t want any of you kids to touch or move the fertilizer. And don’t walk in the grass I’ve already fertilized. You hear me?”
We all acknowledged with head nods that we had heard him.
Dad went into the house to answer the phone and that’s when the trouble began. The trouble that led to this otherwise super good little girl getting spanked.
Johnny, the second oldest kid in the family but the oldest one outside at the time, immediately abused his seniority. He looked at Jeffrey and me and challenged, “You guys, I dare you to push the fertilizer.”
I personally could not see what the big deal was with my dad. Why couldn’t we touch it? And why couldn’t we walk in the grass that had already been fertilized? After all, my dad, as he pushed the fertilizer, was walking on the grass right after it had been fertilized. Then I remembered – we were all barefoot. Maybe that had something to do with it.
My grandma had once told me that if I stepped on a weed in my bare feet, the weed would start to grow inside me. I’m not sure I believed her at the time but maybe there was some correlation.
Anyway, if Jeffrey and I just pushed the fertilizer forward a couple of inches, Dad would never know.
“I’ll do it!” Jeff announced.
“Me too,” I declared.
We entered the lawn by crossing over from the driveway onto the part of the lawn that had not yet been fertilized, careful not to step on any weeds lest my stomach start to ache. (You can’t be too careful around weeds.)
We reached the fertilizer and both of us touched its handle lightly. A furtive glance toward the garage reassured us that my dad had not yet returned from his phone call nor had he seen us touch the fertilizer.
We were daring, Jeff and I. We pushed the fertilizer forward about a foot. Hey! This was fun! We pushed it a few more feet, following the tire lines my dad had made pushing the fertilizer in the opposite direction. We were pushing it just the way my dad would have done. Whoa! Hold up. We couldn’t go too far or my dad would surely know the fertilizer had been moved. Jeffrey and I pulled the fertilizer backwards a bit.
We had done the dare and we hadn’t been caught. Hooray for us! We retreated back to the garage, still undetected by Dad.
A few minutes later, his phone call over, my father emerged from the house. He started toward the fertilizer when a whiney voice squeaked, “Dad! Jeff and Jill pushed the fertilizer when you were inside.”
I could have wrung Jimmy’s neck! What a little brat.
Dad turned to us and glared. “After I told you kids not to touch the fertilizer, you went and did it anyway?”
“Johnny dared us,” Jeff reported defiantly.
“It shouldn’t matter that John dared you,” Dad seethed. “I told you not to touch it.”
So, we were all spanked with a wooden paddle – once a play-thing, now a weapon. In the family room, one at a time, we had to bend over my dad’s lap, each of us receiving about three whacks. I don’t remember it hurting that bad but you’d never guess it by the way Jeff and Jim hollered and screamed. That’s right. Jim and John were paddled too. John for daring us. Jeff and I for committing the actual crime – disobeying my dad. Jimmy for being a tattle tail. I remember thinking that Jimmy’s getting spanked was funny and worth any butt pain I may have suffered.
The only kid in the family not spanked that day was my older sister, Julie, who watched us getting spanked from the hallway, a whisper of a smirk on her face. ✿
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