Suffice it to say, I was spanked, a second time, OR The 100th Blog.

I didn’t get spanked, as a child…much.

U.L. didn’t really believe in that, unless you’d done some really horrendous thing, which I never truly did because God, you know, also rented a room at U.L.’s house, and so it was really hard to get away with much of anything between the two of them. And then there was Jesus. He was always like, Hey, we’ll fix it later. I liked him the most. I hated that he moved out.

I’m not saying I never got spanked, kids being kids, but I tried really hard to be a good boy. And, for the most part, I was.

I didn’t do anything illegal until I was of age, which then made it not illegal…well, some things. But, I would imagine living in Orlando would challenge anyone’s fealty to the law. I was, until the age of twenty-one, give or take a few years, so picture-perfect that I could have had my own Bible story. It would be a devastatingly, achingly luculent parable about the evils of children who were born a smoke screen. About the shocking shallowness that excessive daydreaming and over-reading of literary classics causes in small boys who are living so many different, confusing lives.

And it would also, in spades I tell you, address the dangers of being quiet, of staying quiet, and of speaking low, when speaking was necessary.

In my family, you see, we fought with the standard Victorian weapons of mass destruction: words and stares.

U.L. could cut you down to size quicker than a bee sting with nothing but the curve of an eyebrow, and Nana could put you in your place with just the ever so subtle shift of her mouth. I won’t even speak of Tigi or GamVa, here. Their powers of reprimand are too potent to even be put on the page.

This is how we loved and fought: tersely and sternly…and yet, genuinely.

We also did not raise our voices. That wasn’t “of class.” So, imagine if you will, fighting fire with a flame, or sometimes half a spark, or better yet, a defective Bic lighter.

Regardless, it’s still eerily effective.

We would rather live together in abject silence until the anger passed over, much like the Angel of Death, except instead of painting my bedroom door with a red slash, I would walk around embarrassed with flushed cheeks at the “crime I had committed,” whatever it may have been.

It never failed to work.

Ah, the Old South: antebellum homes, insane half-Jewish blood, candle factories, magnolias, cattle farms, churches, guilt…oh, and cornbread dressing.

It’s just about the only South I know.

So, then, with a family this prone to not showing how upset they are about anything on earth, what oh what could I have done to garner a spanking? Two, even?

I’m glad you pretended to ask.

My first offense was, I think in retrospect, worthy of a spanking. I’d been left alone too long in the house, and I’d discovered my mother’s deteriorating vanity, full of old make-up, in a back bedroom. We never went into this part of the house, except when U.L. felt the need to play “The Old Rugged Cross,” or “Whispering Hope,” on the stagy upright that sat against the front parlor window, next to her bedroom.

We couldn’t go in the parlor at night because the curtains were too sheer…music only happened in that house when the sun was out.

I, naturally, went into her bedroom, then, during the day. And in it, there stood this huge vanity, an antique, with an oval, gilded mirror that seemed to float above the dresser. Who wouldn’t be intrigued? I sat down on the soft, rounded bench, covered barely with the remains of a tulle and cotton cushion, and proceeded to open every single drawer.

I collected quite a bit of mascara, lipstick, melted rouge, and broken eyeliner pencils, one that was shamelessly from the 80s and electric blue.

I bet you think I made my lips up, slapped some rouge on my cheeks, outlined my eyelids, extended my lashes. 

But, I didn’t. That small mountain was a later one to climb. No, I, instead, took my loot and crawled onto the ancient sleigh bed in the room there, and began to draw on the quilted bedspread. It was a garish pink a la Tigi, and so I had to concentrate and dig deeply into the fabric for my artwork to be clearly seen.

And the things I drew.

I drew spaceships, and birds, and in one of the corners a rather macabre scene: a hearse, with a small comment bubble wafting above the hood that said simply, “But, he was dead.”

Do you know how much determination it takes to draw on fabric, of any kind? Of course, I was spanked. I was seven.

I’d have spanked myself, had I known what bits of family history I was ruining. (Or adding to).

How I avoided therapy, though, is not surprising: Could you imagine a southern family admitting to the plain fact of having something akin to an idiot savant in their midst, and out in public?  Hardly. I just became a “colorful child, and so imaginative.” I didn’t get to many birthday parties.

The second time I was spanked was because I’d convinced a slow cousin of mine to sneak off with me, one afternoon, to the neighbor’s barn to see a litter of new puppies that had been born to the rogue part-Collie/part-Cujo who’d taken up residence there.

I’m not sure if I was spanked then because I’d manipulated a slow cousin or because of the threat of rabies or a combination of the two.

Suffice it to say, I was spanked, a second time. I was eleven.

In between those four years, and up until I turned thirty, I fell into the expected pattern of familial silence, much to their relief. I did my work, I sang in church, I wrote little stories, I read every blame book I came across, I didn’t put any elbows on the table, I said Yes Ma’am and No Sir, and all-in-all became the storybook child everyone wants.

At least on Sundays.

The trouble is, those Sundays just never were quite as good as the stories I read.

Which, I think, says a lot about what I tried to be, then.

But a lot more about whom I’m becoming now.

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