A story of old-fashioned domestic discipline is told by the son of a very strict mother in the Deep South back in the day. If I was sent to my room it meant I was going to get switched, being sent to her room meant the belt. I was usually switched for making failing grades in school, fighting, telling lies and infractions in general. I still can see her going to the Peach or Hickory bush to break off a switch. It would be at least five feet or longer with a very heavy bottom and thin at the tip end.
In England in you would think physical chastisement of minors was well and truly a thing of the past. Therefore the punishments that my parents apparently occasionally suffered in their childhoods should not have applied to me. Trouble was someone forgot to tell my grandmother. Okay, at the time of this story I was actually eighteen and therefore technically an adult. However, the law is, as I understand it, rather grey in this area. As I said, it was becoming socially frowned upon no matter what their private beliefs were are. As a result, what happened in late July of that was a rather nasty shock.
That was on a Friday. Saturday passed without incident. Not for me but for my youngest sister Isabel who is My grandma decided to wake us up at 10 because she had breakfast set up in the kitchen.
This is where I share the wisdom that a granny, as an elder of the tribe, accumulates in her journey through life. The reach of my mind is wide, and sometimes even a little deep. Sometimes, like Whitman, I contradict myself. Sometimes I wax eloquent. Sometimes I fall on my face.