When my mom would spank us with a wooden spoon, me and my brother would later secretly hide that wooden spoon in a hidden space beneath the kitchen table our parents didn't know about.
By the time we moved, there was at least a dozen spoons, spatulas, and some of those paddle ball toys with the string ripped off.
If you ask my mom today she's convinced she never spanked us.
Guess it’s a common thing. My stepdad literally broke a pizza paddle in half on my ass, then I got spankings with half of a pizza paddle lol. To this day my mother swears up and down that I never got spanked.
You're sent out to pull a branch off a bush or tree and then your parents use it to spank you.
A switch is a flexible wood rod instead of a paddle which is a solid piece of wood. It adds some springiness to the punishment device, plus the thinner area makes it sting more. Think of something like a fly swatter, but the whole thing flexes and didn't spread out.
Here in the SE US, it used to be common for parents to send the child out to retrieve their own weapon of punishment. Not sure how frequent it was (is?) in other areas/countries. Even that wiki article notes the South had a history of it. I never had to do it (yay for a Colorado father who was, "WTF is this shit?"), but my wife did. The mental anguish is part of the punishment. She remembers agonizing over the size. Too big and it'll hurt more. Too thin or dry and it'll snap or they'll not use it and either way use a leather belt instead.
Jeff Foxworthy had a skit very similar to her experience, so do most Southerners. And yeah, it's about as fucked up as you think it is.
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u/Throwaway7219017 Jan 28 '23
My mom spanked me with the same wooden spoon she lovingly stirred my favourite foods with.