Rubber Hoses are replaced by time outs!

I have my biggest inspirations at 3:30 AM and if I don't go with them, they are just lost.  So this morning I woke up with a boy named Dwight Kite on my mind.  He was an 8th grader at Nickerson Grade School and I must have been in 4th or 5th grade.

* I must put a disclaimer here to say that while the names are pretty close to accurate from my childhood days, the memories that accompany them are solely my perceptions recalled 65 years later and may or may not be completely accurate.  But the events usually have some merit for some reason.  That having been said, I will continue.

As I recall Dwight was a big boy.  He was referred to around town as "now quite right in the head."  There were several of those in my growing up days and were times different they would have been referred to as "special ed" and later "special needs" and today I think they are just kids.  We have certainly come a long way in how we treat our children, but remember the time frame I am talking here.  Dwight was big.  Dwight was slow.  Dwight was easily led astray.

The incident that is in my mind today was one of those times.  There were also big boys who thought it fun to "rile Dwight up."  I have no idea what had gone on and it is entirely irrelevant.  I do know Dwight was "called into the office."

Mr. Houston was our principal.  As I recall he was tall and skinny, but when you are 3 feet tall everyone looks tall.  He wore suits and his shoes were always polished.  His hair was parted on the side and combed in the manner hair was combed in those days.  Several times a day he would walk slowly down the hall and peer into the class rooms to make sure we were studying.  He could stop a heart with a look so we always kept our heads down.

Dwight was in the office with amazing regularity and we heard things were going to "come to a head" soon.  Now you need to know, that back then a teacher could administer "discipline" in the classroom.  Miss Howe in 4th grade was fond of coming up behind the dawdler with a wooden ruler and cracking it down with the straight edge on top of your head.  Oh, trust me!  You do not know what pain is until suddenly that ruler hits your bony head and the stars fly.  Dawdling days were over then!

But if the teacher could not control someone, they were sent to the Principal for a "talking to" and usually that was all it took.  I never got a "talking to" and I was very sure I did not want one.  Dwight on the other hand received several of them.  Mr. Houston kept a rubber hose in his office and we always thought it was just to scare us straight, but Dwight learned different.  We all watched as he came out of the office with tears streaming down his face and red marks on his arms.  Mr. Houston had won.  We all were sad and of course went home at night to report the action to our parents.

Well, that is called "corporal punishment" and Dwight had been bad and no one seemed to know just what he had done that was so bad, but it must have been bad or Mr. Houston would not have whipped him with the hose.  Dwight was never quite the same after that.  He came to school and was just a big, hulking boy who didn't have much to say.  And then he was gone.  He still lived in the house across the street with his mother and father, but he was rarely seen.  I never saw him, but the other kids said they did.  I don't know.

That was a long time ago, but it still sticks in my mind.  I marvel at how our world has changed, but no matter how much it changes, it still stays the same.  Oh, the days of the rubber hose are gone, pretty much and replaced by more modern methods like "time out" or Lord only knows what.  But there is still the standard there that kids have to measure up  or be labeled different. 

I wonder what Dwight Kite's home was like.  I wonder if our society been back then what it is today what Dwight would have become.  I do not know when they quit beating kids into submission, but I am thinking maybe some of them could still benefit from a little of that.  Just not from the principal of the place you go to learn.

It was a different world back then.  It is sad that all these years later, I still think of Dwight Kite.  Our family went to church with Mr. Houston and his wife and son, and I was as afraid of him in church as I was in school.  Later Miss Barkiss, the music teacher, married the son, David.  That is all I know.  That may be all I want to know.

Another year down the shitter.

Made it through the New Years Eve thing stone sober and sound asleep.  Not the first time that has happened.  Oh, I had a nostalgic moment before I went to bed.  I thought about the past year and asked the good Lord to forgive some of the vindictive thoughts I had.  Also asked him to bless all those who are less fortunate then I am.  All in all the last year was not a bad one.  I managed to spend a lot of the kids inheritance.  I made a few enemies and got rid of a couple toxic friendships (for want of a better word.)  And I thought about making a bunch of New Years Resolutions on a sheet of paper and putting it on the refrigerator so I could look at it every day, but I had a second thought that beat hell out of that first thought!  But since I did all this thinking in the middle of the night, I just rolled over and went back to sleep!

Let's just face it!  I am who I am and I shall remain that way.  I should quit cussing, but that just ain't happening.  I should start being a softer person, but hell with that.  I already go to church every Sunday, so that is a given.  I try to be kind to people, but some people are just such total assholes that they make it impossible.  Most of the time I grit my teeth and just put one foot in front of the other and it works for me.  But of course there is always that one person that is insistent on having my honest opinion on our politics and they ding at me until I give them my opinion and then they will talk louder and faster to convince me that I am wrong.  Well, it is down hill from there.  When I get in a screaming match I tend to spit when I talk and there is nothing more degrading then an old woman foaming at the mouth  over something she has no control over.  I am getting pretty good at just walking away from those situations, but it has taken me 76 years to learn that art.

I gotta tell you I am not happy with our political climate today.  I spent many years working on gay rights, migrant rights, women's rights, racial equality, animal rights, Black Hills Energy rate hikes, health care, food labeling and that damn GMO crap that we are forced to eat or starve.  I want a quiet peaceful world where we all are equal and it just isn't happening.  I thought we had made strides and then some lunatic becomes our leader and with a stroke of his pen changes it all.  Or he thinks he does.  Most of his edicts can be overturned because they are illegal and won't happen just because he wants them to, but we are in limbo as they creep through the judicial system to be declared unconstitutional.

And that damn wall!  Did we not learn anything from the Berlin Wall?  I knew a lady once who moved to Mexico and lived there until she died.  Why?  Because she could afford to live on her Social Security down there and she had a cleaning lady and ate very well.  The climate suited her and her little condo was very nice.  I survive on Social Security because my home is paid for and so is my car.  Sadly, if I want anything extra I am dipping into the kids inheritance or taking in some sort of work that pays cash under the table.  And while we are on the subject of the border wall, is that for us to keep the Mexicans out, or for keeping our own people in?   Our little world is collapsing around our heads and we are not smart enough to see it.  But that is alright, because they just voted us a tremendous tax cut!  As long as they keep telling us how well off we are, we can keep thinking some one cares for us.

We can not pass a gun law because the NRA owns us.  I hear the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people and they can do it with a knife, or a car, or anything."  We live in an atmosphere of hate.  Pure and simple.  We are controlled by who we send to Congress.  It is that simple.  We have morons in Congress who have been there forever and we keep sending them back because when re-election time comes they tell us things will be different.  Well now you see what different is!  Talk about raping and pillaging that goes on way back in history and then take a look at what we have in Washington today!  And enjoy yourself, its later than you think!

I hope I live long enough to see Americans pull their heads out of their asses.