The Last Tough Generation

Now this will sound a little like bragging but I believe I came from the last tough generation in history. I'm sure everyone says that this is just part of the whole "kids have it so easy today blah blah blah." No this has nothing to do with that. Each generation will always have it slightly easier than the one before, that's just the nature of time, technology and the normal human desire to see there kids live easier than themselves. This has more to do with seeing a difference in the way kids are raised today. See I grew up with all these stories of serial killers who were all abused and molested. So somewhere along the way a logic jump was made that we can’t discipline our children physically. Which is some bullshit. Everyone learns through positive and negative reinforcement I don't care what scientist, sociologist or any other fucking "ist" says. If you learn that if you do good things good thing happen you keep doing good things and the opposite is true. If a child knows that if he is disrespectful to his elders he will get the shit kicked out of him he tends to be more respectful.

One night while stopped at a red light two little shits walking across the street stopped in front of the car to talk to some one else. When the light turned red I honked the horn. The kids moved to the side but as I started to move one of the little failed abortion started yelling at me "Why you fucking honking your horn!!!" I stopped my car and started to back up the kid started moving fast and there is no way I am going to win a foot race with 14-year-old punk. In retrospect I should have hit him with the car.

When I was growing up I would never have mouthed off to some body... Hell I wouldn't of stopped in front of a car at a green light. Why? I been hit a lot by the time I was 16 and I learned i didn't like that.  See my dad was a hard drinking partier who didn't always come home, but we knew which bars to find him if we needed to. My mom was slightly more responsible but much more bitter about having to watch her own kids.

So it was not uncommon for my brother and I to be shipped to my aunt's house while my dad and mom "went to go see a man about a horse." I always wondered what fucking horse till I figured out they were going to party so hard that they didn't want to kids to see them wrecked the next day and that must have been fucking Olympic levels of debauchery cause I have seen my parents fucked up so many times that whatever happened on "those" weekends must be something so spectacular that I can only imagine animal erotica was involved. And trust me that image has often made me wonder if I should just eat a bullet rather than contemplate it as far as I have.

Anyway on a number of occasions I would eventually screw up in some way while my father was in some form of intoxication and I would eventually be beat. My parents don't remember these disciplinary steps to well but I do. By the time I graduated High school I had been hit with my fathers hand, a belt, a switch (A type of branch), a phone chord, a phone, a shoe, a can opener (Both kinds), a frying pan, a portable radio, the bible, a base ball bat, a can of creamed corn (closed), a plastic bottle of baby powder, a soft ball (there not really soft) A chanqlueta (flip flops), a Frisbee, a car and a few other items. By the way I am missing gaps from my childhood memory.

The other thing you have to realize was that it was totally acceptable for someone else to discipline your child. Granted my grandmother may have been a little crazy and gone too far on occasion. She would beat her grandchildren for the slightest thing. I remember getting beat because I was crying from a beating I had received 5 minutes earlier. Yeah the bitch was crazy in her later years she became a nice old lady but I know the truth she is trying to trick god so she can get into heaven. Hippies like to use the phrase it takes a village to raise a child. But kids from my neighborhood knew that it took an entire block to beat a kid's ass.

See not only could you not fuck up in front of your parents, you couldn't fuck up in front of your parents' friends cause they would smack you around a few times than tell your parent. So now you get beat for fucking up as well as embarrassing your parents in front of others. The worse thing is I know that my growing up was fairly tame compared to other kids. See these events were not daily. And I deserved to be disciplined but what would happen is the punishment would not match the incident. I grew up with kids who would just get beat for walking in the house. See I never viewed my life as the victim of abuse. Some people may disagree with me but to me that was just the price I paid for being a brat. But I knew kids who used to get hot irons to their backs. Cigarettes put out on them. See the difference between me and those kids were that even when they didn't do anything wrong. While I may not agree with my parents over how I was punished I've learned to understand that I should have been disciplined. Not necessarily with a can opener, than again I was a pretty big kid...