Lydia Schatz - Beat to death in the name of God.

[thesummerqueen]

Side note: My parents are Baptist fundies and I was spanked a LOT when I was a kid. A LOT! Oddly enough, even though my dad was the strict disciplinarian, it was my mom who regularly broke wooden spoons on my backside.

God damn that hurt! To this day, I can't look at a wooden spoon without a little chill runnin up my spine.

I really couldn't tell you what my dad was raised as - they're Romanian so it could be anything at this point. He was a big believer in spanking. When we were younger we all got a few "brain dusters" up the backsides of our heads too. My mother was a spanker, until I got old enough to understand what the mother-look was (you know, the kind that makes you wish you were already 6 ft under, raised to the power of Jew-guilt). Neither one of them believed in actually beating a child (at least, in the case of my dad, not for disciplinary purposes). I was sent to my room a lot, which might account for being a bookworm. I'm personally a big proponent of labor.

Anyway, my point is - my parents didn't switch me or paddle me and I'm now a (mostly) law-abiding citizen who pays taxes and tries to control my tail-gating urges and is polite to old people and holds doors for strangers. If my parents say they need me to be somewhere, I try to be there and help them out. I don't kick puppies or kittens and I think I have a pretty well-developed sense of compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. I'm not perfect, but I know it. I try to work on the things I know are flaws, and express myself in such a way that is most befitting.

So...what did my parents do right that these Christians think shouldn't have happened without me being severely punished every time I smart mouthed (a LOT) or didn't do my chores (often) or lied (not a whole lot or about anything really bad, but still)?