52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Trouble

Viewer Discretion Advised. This post contains violence, unruly children, and humor.

My parents were very strict.  They doled out the usual punishments of the 1950s-1970s, spankings as we were children then grounding as we got older. I was one of those unfortunate children that almost always got caught. Consequently, I carefully evaluated every potential infraction to determine if it was worth the punishment before executing.

Everyone except Baby Bro. If you really feel the need, you may
use age progression software to advance it about 3 years to see
what we looked like when this unfortunate incident took place.

There was one, and only one, incident that I can remember when we were caught but were not punished. We had a vinyl ottoman (I think it was oval shaped, longer than it was wide). Sis (age 9), Bro (age 7) and I (age 10) got the idea that it would be really fun to prop the ottoman on the sofa with one end against the back and the other on the seat and slide down it. Mom was probably at work and the sitter must have been too busy with Lil Sis (age 4) and Baby Bro (age 1) to pay attention to what we were up to.

We were right...it was FUN! The slippery surface of the vinyl made it a perfect slide. After several gleeful turns down the impromptu slide, the ottoman suddenly crashed through the front window (the sofa was placed under the window). Oh, oh! This was bad, very bad. We knew that we were going to get it and get it good. Once we got through the initial finger-pointing (I still say it was Bro's fault), we had another bright idea. Let's put books and pillows in our pants so that when Daddy spanked us it wouldn't hurt so much. We all hurried to put this plan into action.

When Daddy came home and saw what we had done, he gave us The Look and we all cowered. But when he saw our pants bulging with the books and pillows, he quickly turned away to hide his laughter. We never did get our spanking.

Although we successfully avoided the punishment that day, we were never foolish enough to try that trick again.

Thanks for dropping by.

 

 
52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History is an ongoing challenge from GeneaBloggers and Amy Coffin that invites genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants..