When I was small I would go outside and play like any other kid so mom would tell me don’t go out of the yard. Now you have to understand that I lived on a little hill and there was a field that my dad would put a garden in and a creek that ran through the lower portion of the yard. So of course being a kid I decided one day to kick my brand new beach ball down the hill and of course I had to go get it I couldn’t let it get away! So I kicked it a bit and let it roll and I did it again and again until guess what? It was in the creek! The one place I was told absolutely not to go. I was playing in a bit of water and all of the sudden I heard my ENTIRE name DEBORAH ANNETTE BERTELSMANN!! Oh Boy did I know I was in trouble! I tried to get up the bank of the creek before my mom got to me but it didn’t work – she met me at the top of the creek with a paddle in her hand….It wasn’t an ordinary paddle it was a metal paint stirrer with holes in it! (ouch) She spanked me with that paddle through the field, up 22 steps into the house and turned me across her knee and wailed some more. Then she put me down and cried harder than I had ever seen her cry before. Believe me the spanking HURT!
When my dad came home for lunch as he did everyday my mom told him what I had done and of course I thought he would have sympathy for me and baby me but my little heart was broken when he turned to me and said “you got what you deserved” and turned around and kept eating his lunch.
Years later I understood why my mom had spanked me. She feared for my life as I was playing in a creek that had snakes in it. I didn’t realize it as I was only 4. That was the one and only spanking I got in my entire life. I may have been mouthy as a teen but never to the point of deserving a spanking any shape or form. The threat was more than enough!