Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

The tannoy in the supermarket crackled urgently.

“Murder in aisle six, murder in aisle six, by the tea, coffee, long life milk and rice crackers.” Of course there wasn’t, but it sounded like it.

A five-year-old was in full temper tantrum - purple in the face screaming, tears streaming, showers of spittle, arms flailing. He had lost the plot, venting anger and frustration to the entire supermarket. And Mum had lost control.

“River, please stop it dear?” pleaded Mum. But this River was having none of it, coursing on towards full meltdown. A flooded River of swirling, raging emotion.   

Shoppers, strangers, were eyeing each other uncomfortably.

“It’s just anger and frustration” she explained. “He’s trying to communicate his needs and emotions.” Oh, that’s alright then.

But you could sense old-fashioned attitudes surfacing around her – why wasn’t River grabbed by the lobe and marched outside to communicate his needs and emotions. Shouldn’t Mum have explained to River there might be consequences, and they wouldn’t be coated in chocolate and come frozen on a stick which was apparently the root cause.

“Gentle parenting,” sneered one witness to River’s dam-bursting behaviour.

“You hurt my feelings when you behave like that River.” Harrumph!!”

Got us talking about ‘cruel and unusual punishments’ heaped on us baby boomers for minor infractions. We were shamelessly slapped, smacked, strapped, caned, whupped – anything that involved pain and humiliation was on the table. Not saying it was right, but it happened. Not saying it made me a better person, but I don’t have a criminal record… although there were a couple of close scrapes.

Of course there were “wait until your father gets home” situations - something akin to death row. The condemned would count down to the moment the Grim Reaper pulled him from his cell. I would count down to 5.30pm when my father arrived home and turned executioner, paddled my butt. “This will hurt me more than it hurts you,” he would say. Bollocks.

He was also creative with his punishments. Like the time Gary Postlethwaite gave me a licking after school. The next day I got a phone call from Sergeant Sommerville, the local plod, telling me I had been reported fighting in a public place and I was now in his “black book.” I didn’t know what a policeman’s black book was but I presumed it was a compendium of felons, crooks, perps and ne’er-do-wells, guys staring at prison. Of course my father had conspired with the Sergeant. Beaten up one day, shamed the next, lesson learned.

A friend was petrified of the wooden spoon – she would cower in the corner every time it came out, covering her butt. “And all because I was a child with personality – well, that wasn’t allowed in the 1980s.”

My Mum, bless her, was always breaking wooden spoons. It never hurt us. We were just grateful she didn’t find something heavier, harder, or cutting, like the cane, or rattan, which Singapore uses for judicial and prison canings.

Yep – once upon a time schoolboys, including this one, and adult inmates got the same corporal punishment. One minute a high school teacher was discussing the syntax of Prospero or the angles of an isosceles triangle and the next he was telling you to bend, close the legs, and whacking you with the rattan or cane. It was imprecise – the bruises and welts could be inflicted anywhere between the knees and small of the back. The indignity and the agony lingered for days - the bruising longer. Brutal punishment for minor sins.

Wasn’t right but that’s the way it was.

Now, here’s a memorable tale of summary justice. A friend was at the family dinner table when he inadvertently let slip with a pejorative term to his mother – used the offensive female dog word. He didn’t see it coming but when he opened his eyes, he was on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling, after being firmly back-handed. Between mouthfuls his Dad said calmly  – “When you can, please get up, apologise to your mother and go to your room.” 

And the coup de grâce. “And if you can’t remember she is your mother, please remember she is my wife.”

Ouch!

Words can be just as painful as a slap, thwack or thrup. Like when I described someone “whor-ing off down the road.” I meant haring. Dad calmly asked me to explain my choice of words. I didn’t explain very well because he then advised that I: “shouldn’t use words I didn’t know the meaning of”.

If I wasn’t embarrassed enough, he added: “There are so many beautiful words in the English language, why use bad ones, horrible ones”.        

Oh, the power of being slapped with a few well-chosen words.