Punishment, Southern Style

I don’t know about you, but personally I think today’s parents are allowing the lunatics to run the asylum; and when I see children misbehaving, I often recall the various forms of punishment my parents delivered whenever my brother, sister, or I misbehaved.

There was the old soap-in-the-mouth punishment if they heard you utter a word you knew better than to utter in their presence, or anyone else’s, for that matter. In fact, there were certain words you might utter while all alone in the middle of a thicket of blackberry brambles or waist-deep in a kudzu field or standing in a pine forest approximately a mile from the house, that your parents would somehow know you had uttered, and—whoosh—out would come the old Lifebuoy soap the moment you dared show your face back at the house. You say, “So what?” Well, let me ask you something: have you ever tasted Lifebuoy soap? If not, then trust me, it’s a taste you will never forget. In fact, that taste will linger on your taste buds for as long as you live. I should know.

Another form of punishment my parents applied was a good dose of Castor Oil. This was usually meted out whenever we kids dared “sass” our parents. Don’t ask me what how a dose of castor oil was supposed to cure a “sassy mouth,” since it gave you the squirts; but believe me, it worked, perhaps because it tasted almost as vile as Lifebuoy soap. But the worst—even worse than Lifebuoy soap and castor oil—form of punishment my parents delivered was the “Switch.”

I grew up in the Deep South, namely Fairburn, Georgia; and Georgia is known as “The Peach State,” given its rich red soil produces some of the most delectable peaches in the United States, maybe even the entire world. Anyway, my daddy always had peach trees. We kids would eat fresh peaches during growing season; and Mama, she’d make peach preserves, peach marmalade, peach cobblers, and even peach ice cream, although we kids would have to crank the ice cream churn for about half a day until that ice cream was hard enough to eat. Mama would also pickle peaches with spices—they were tangy and went so well with field peas—plus, she’d dry peaches in the sun then package them so we could have fried peach pies in the winter. In other words, my family ate a lot of peaches in one form or another.

But my parents, being innovative, found another use for their peach trees, and that was making “instruments of correction” for their children. In case you didn’t know it, peach limbs—the new green ones, not the old brown ones—are extremely flexible and pliant and make fantastic switches. In fact, they make far better switches than mimosa limbs, which tend to be brittle and snap off after a good whack or two on your child’s behind or bare legs. Let me ask you: have you ever been whipped with a switch off a peach tree? If not, then you have no real understanding of pain. Trust me, it hurts and then some. Fact is, being flailed with a peach limb stings like no other sting you will ever experience. Forget a belt. Forget a fly flap. Forget a wet dishrag. A peach switch is the winner, no hands down.

So, with that in mind, I think today’s children would greatly benefit from a good old-fashioned switching with a pliant peach limb. In fact, I may just start a company—Switches Unlimited—and sell peach limbs on E-bay. Who knows? Maybe it’ll start a fad, and parents all across the nation will begin flailing away at their rotten little kids with peach switches; and before we know it, children will once again be children instead of miniature adults who think the world revolves solely around them.