Creative Punishment

When I was younger I was a troublemaker. (Shocking!) More than that, I was a brat. I would scream, shout and pitch a fit whenever I thought it necessary, which was apparently all the time. I don’t know how my mother dealt with me, especially in the teenage years.

At first punishment was being put in the corner in a “time out.” My brother and I would both be positioned at opposite corners of the dining room, facing into the corner away from each other. It rarely was ever just me, or just my brother, who were in trouble and the entire time we were in time out we were either sulking, throwing things at each other or giggling. Time outs rarely worked for us. Ironically, I can only remember the punishments; I never remember what I actually did.

One thing about my father is that he is very handy around the house; he’s redone bathrooms, finished basements, rewired rooms to put in ceiling fans and new lights, and built us swing sets without following directions. When we got older, I was probably at least 10 or so, he started a new trend in punishment. Instead of getting put in a chair facing the corner, we would get sent to our rooms, which would seem fine since I had a bajillion books and toys to play with, except he would take the door off.

Thats right, he would take the door completely off its hinge. This meant no privacy, no hiding behind doors so that the parents couldn’t see what we were up to. He would take it off for DAYS, depending on how bad we had been and how loudly we had slammed the door behind us on our way upstairs to serve our punishment.

Let me tell ya, when you are a preteen girl this punishment is the worst. (And not only because my posters of JTT and Devon Sawa were on the back of my door and i’d have to go without them for days) My brother could freely wander in, I didn’t feel like my diaries were well protected anymore-that my mom could just walk in and read them. (Not that she couldn’t anyway) My life was on display with that door gone.

It only worked in one house though and luckily, we moved away from that house when I was 13. From then on I lived in rooms that had hallways, or doors with antique hinges my father wouldn’t dare touch for fear of breaking. Ever since, I have valued my privacy, valued what a door can do to keep me seperated from other people. In college I loved having my door open so that my friends could wander in and out, so that new people walking down the hallway could say hi. But when I wanted to be alone, I could shut the door and people would have to knock before entering, I didn’t have to be bothered if I didn’t want to.

This is one of those random memories I had, unsure of what triggered it but for some reason I just remember watching my father in complete anger take down my door, saying something about how a lesson needed to be learned and it was going to be accomplished without a door.

I’m going to need to learn how to unhinge doors so that I can pull this punishment trick on my kids.

What kinds of creative punishment did you have to go through when you were a kid?