Mom would give us a single swat to break the chain of kid-crazy. And then if the error was egregious enough, she’d tell us that our father would speak to us about it. Partly, that was good-cop / bad-cop but partly it was because being talked to by my dad was WAY worse than anything. He’d sit on the parental bed and he’d ask what happened. Which we had BETTER tell truly and completely because he had already heard from Mom. Then he’d suggest how we should have behaved. Then he’d talk about what rules applied and how we should have understood that. Then we had to repeat back his WHOLE LECTURE… in OUR OWN WORDS. This wasn’t possible, so we’d get THE WHOLE LECTURE AGAIN. With footnotes. And then we would have to repeat it ALL (including footnotes) AGAIN. This would go on for CENTURIES of time (never less than 15 minutes by universal time, and seldom more than 45, but FORTY FIVE MINUTES when you’re standing, uncomfortable, trying to concentrate and 8 years old: Torture.)
Fortunately, we never had to wait longer than until “after supper”. Considering the number of kids they were feeding, I suppose it made sense to have one of them too worried to have an appetite.
Mom would give us a single swat to break the chain of kid-crazy. And then if the error was egregious enough, she’d tell us that our father would speak to us about it. Partly, that was good-cop / bad-cop but partly it was because being talked to by my dad was WAY worse than anything. He’d sit on the parental bed and he’d ask what happened. Which we had BETTER tell truly and completely because he had already heard from Mom. Then he’d suggest how we should have behaved. Then he’d talk about what rules applied and how we should have understood that. Then we had to repeat back his WHOLE LECTURE… in OUR OWN WORDS. This wasn’t possible, so we’d get THE WHOLE LECTURE AGAIN. With footnotes. And then we would have to repeat it ALL (including footnotes) AGAIN. This would go on for CENTURIES of time (never less than 15 minutes by universal time, and seldom more than 45, but FORTY FIVE MINUTES when you’re standing, uncomfortable, trying to concentrate and 8 years old: Torture.)
Fortunately, we never had to wait longer than until “after supper”. Considering the number of kids they were feeding, I suppose it made sense to have one of them too worried to have an appetite.