‘Go wait for me in your room.’
Those words, 35 years ago, uttered by my father, his voice void of any emotion, meant I was in for a proper flogging.
In those days child abuse had to involve blood and a hospital visit.
Anything else was merely considered good old fashioned discipline.
‘Did you cut the dog’s tail off?’
‘Yes, dad’
‘Go wait for me in your room’
‘Who broke the lounge window?’
‘I did, dad’
‘Go wait for me in your room’
I waited in my room many, many times, once because I tied my eight-year-old sister to a tree in the backyard and left her there for a whole afternoon.
Another time because I played in the mud with new clothes.
Because I kept the 20 cent coin I was given for church, instead throwing one of my blazer’s buttons in the tray – besides ‘disrespecting God’ and making our family look like ‘destitute cretins’ – I committed ‘vandalism’.
Those were the reasons dad listed, in a calm and clear voice before he ordered me to turn around and bend over the bed.
He always listed at least three reasons why he has ‘no other choice’ but to ‘hurt’ me, but never forgot to add that what he was about to do was ‘heart-breaking’ for him.
His last words before the first blow were always: ‘Remember son, this is just as painful for me as it is for you’, but I didn’t believe him and thought him to be a sadist.
Only once I tried to argue my case, that I honestly thought the cat looked better covered in red enamel, but that only aggravated my situation because dad didn’t believe in excuses.
Today, I’m grateful for what he did because, while I no longer paint animals, I still bugger up quite regularly. And when I do, I take responsibility for it.
People like that and respect you for it.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of others.
Everywhere around me – in society and in the news – I see people making spectacular cock-ups and then refusing to take responsibility for it.
Even if they are caught red-handed, with brush in one hand and a red cat hanging by its tail from the other, they will insist they did nothing wrong.
And people will believe them.
What we need is less commissions enquiring about allegations which are obviously true, and instead just one big man saying; ‘go wait for me in your room’.
But that’s not going to happen because in this day and age we live in, punishing a child is a criminal act, and being caught giving buttons to the poor not so much.
