Peas

My brother Jack hates peas and pumpkin.  Why he hates pumpkin, I do not know but he hates peas more.  Maybe the reason for this aversion is that my mother used to cook them until they were a grey soggy mess.  No-one in my family liked them much but my brother hated them.  Despite the fact that none of her children loved peas, we used to see them on our dinner plate with some regularity and they would always be attended by drama and tears.  Perhaps my mother secretly loved drama and tears.  Perhaps she thought that every meal was attended by drama and tears, so bring it on!

Jack's usual response to seeing peas on his plate was to throw a tantrum and refuse to eat them.  This made for a wonderful atmosphere at the dinner table.  There would be cajoling and yelling and forcing.  Both parents would end up being involved.  The rest of us would slowly and quietly eat our dinner hoping not to get caught up in any escalation.  My sister who hated peas just as much as Jack practiced swallowing the peas whole so that she didn't need to bite into the squishy mess of pea.  By the time she left school, she could swallow whole forkfuls.

One day my Jack tried a different tack.  He decided that he would take his peas to the bathroom and flush them down the toilet.  The trouble was transporting them there.  There were too many for his hands to carry and my mother may notice his tiny fists with grey green mush oozing between his fingers.  He had no pockets.  His shorts were loose and would not hold anything.  He put them in his underpants and went to the toilet.

My mother perhaps alerted by the lack of drama and tears at the dinner table so far came to inspect his plate and immediately noticed the absence of peas.  This was unusual, as Jack always left the things he hated until last as he hoped to get away with not eating them.  My mother began to suspect a ruse.  She checked the bin and looking down noticed a Hansel and Gretel like trail of peas leading up to the bathroom.  She rushed after my brother and burst into the toilet which was unlocked (brothers!)  and caught him with his pants around his knees, scooping peas out of his underwear.   Those little blighters were slippery.

My mother screamed.  Jack's pants were removed.  There may have been some smacking.  The peas were gathered up, including all those that had dropped on the ground between the kitchen and the bathroom and were dumped back on Jack's plate.  The pants were put back onto Jack's bottom and he was made to sit back down at the table.  He would not be getting up until everything on that plate was eaten.

"But the peas have been in his undies!"  we cried.

Well he had put them there and he could live with the consequences of that action.

"Gross!" we cried, though there may have been some snickering.

So he sat and ate his meal including every last pea and he was never allowed to go the the toilet during a meal again.

Smacking

I grew up in a time when smacking was common and indeed, I was smacked on occasion.  My brother was smacked at least daily and often caned at school as well.  He found conforming to society's rules, well, difficult.  Well when I say smacked, the word today would be beaten.  My father preferred to use a strap when doling out his corporal punishment partly because said brother was known to laugh at beatings that did not physically hurt.  I can say that these beatings did us no harm, though in my brother's case they probably didn't do him much good either.

Our punishments often came with a warning.  "Go get me my strap!"  And the miscreant would indeed scuttle off to find this instrument of torture, even the aforementioned brother.  One time, my sister realising that she was in deep trouble, used this warning to prepare.  Ostensibly looking for "the strap" she raced to our bedroom and put on every pair of underpants that she owned and probably a pair or two of mine.  I think that she may have had to change into track pants as well, now that her jeans no longer fit.  Then out she came for her punishment.  She felt as though she was waddling as the layers of underpants did not allow her legs to touch.  She bent over for her beating, taking care to keep her hands out of the way.  A strap across your hands hurts far more than one across the butt.  The strap came down and her ruse had worked.  She barely felt it.  She felt an urge to laugh but stifled it.  The strap came down again, and again no pain.  The strap came down a third time and my sister let out a loud and distressed wail.  There was perhaps a fourth hit and the wailing continued and then my sister was allowed to run to her bedroom.

Once in her bedroom with the door shut tight, the wailing turned into hysterical laughter.   She began peeling off all the protective layers.

"Why are you laughing?"  we whispered at her.

"It didn't hurt at all,"  she answered.

"But, you were crying,"  we said.

"Yes, when I realised that normally I would have been crying by now I had to fake cry.  Otherwise I would have got caught.  I was so scared anyway.  When the strap came down, it seemed to thud like he was hitting a cushion.  I thought that he'd be able to tell for sure.