Corporal Paddlement

Today, in a little educator orientation, I found out that DeSoto County Schools have a corporal punishment discipline system.  They just brushed over that fact like, “listen, it’s the south,” and moved on to the school’s cell phone policy. Try all you want, it is impossible to forget how truly, deeply strange mandated butt-paddling-for-punishment is.  My elementary school principal, whom the school was named after, had a red perforated rectangular wooden paddle in her office. The threat of getting paddled was often used to get kids to be quiet during assemblies. Most of our K-5 conversations were intense evaluations of how much it actually hurt. There were always rumors about the one boy that didn’t cry and it made the principal so mad that she hit him until his butt fell off and an ambulance (a rare sight in my one stop-light town) had to take him away.  B says nothing like that went down where he grew up in California, even in the seventies. And I say well look what a bunch of free-running-self-indulgent freaks came out of that joint.

Also, we saw Jerry Lawler campaigning on the corner of Poplar and something.. near Spin Street. B was impressed because Jerry L was standing outside, waving and reaching out to the people in the pouring rain. And I said well don’t be too impressed, it has been raining for ten days straight. This is true. He had to get out sometime before the election, if he waited for the rain to stop it would be time for him to run for prez 2012. Hey-Yo! I took a picture of the mayoral rain campaign. It is blurry and I will post it tomorrow.

And the last item of note is that we had a broken-hearted house guest for nearly 30 hours this week, he drove down from Chicago to sleep on our air mattress and then left after eating one of our mini drumsticks. We couldn’t really do much for him except say stuff like, “god doesn’t give you anything he isn’t not trying to punish you for.” and “whatever doesn’t kill you, probably will later” and “when god shuts one door, a levee breaks” and “everything happens for no reason at all.” And that, I truly believe.

I hope the thought liberates you all.