The Truth of it

Last night I was watching a show and the man was talking about having and raising children. What he said at the end struck me as the truth.
"Our parents had it all under control, unlike we today, and this is because someone changed the damn laws".

Growing up I was spanked with a bare hand, a ruler, and yard stick.

The most upset I remember my mother getting was the day she broke her yard stick while spanking me.

The most dreaded punishment was the switch, which we had to retrieve ourselves from one of the thirty forsythia bushes in the yard. We learned to pick a thin brown one. never pick the big ones and never ever pick a green one, picking a green one meant she would have to go out and pick a big brown one. I actually believe the worst part of the punishment was the walk to get the switch, having to clean all the leaves off it which stretched out the time of the spanking. Looking back at it, The whippin' really wasn't all that bad, a few quick snaps and a bit of a sting. But it was a learning experience. What ever the infraction was, it was seldom repeated. Of course, growing up, there were always other opportunities provided in life to earn a whippin.

Growing up the entire front yard was lined along the road with forsythia bushes, plus there were four large ones in the backyard. When I hit my teens I chopped them all down. Not because of of any bad connotations of punishments, the problem was they caught the leaves. Without them the leaves leave my yard in the wind and they becomes my neighbors issue.