Respect My A......

I probably knew almost every inch of the wall in my room. Intimately. Having reflected on it many times in such episodes of doom. All right ‘doom’ is likely an excessive term for the periods of ‘fear’ in which I waited for, ‘the return of your father’. The mere words signified a definite threat, and ‘impending death’ always seemed to hover in the air along with the utterance.

I will also here, briefly raise the modern issue facing many parents, teachers and figures of actual legal authority, where young people don’t appear to listen anymore. They wonder why not. They don’t seem to care, they don’t respect….We did. It was definitely fear in many cases, but, it was also a very healthy respect for positions of authority and our parents. Today I encounter so many people who cannot understand the attitude of the younger generations. So many adults who say things such as, “If I misbehaved like that when I was young, the local police sergeant would give me a kick in the arse… and if it was serious he would threaten to tell me dad or me mum. That stopped me misbehaving’.

So yes, we were frightened of the results of misbehaving, because we knew there would be a punishment. An actual consequence to our actions with a real lesson to be learnt. That was what happened then. Now, it is the apparent lack of consequences that seems to produce most disrespectful and most bad behaviour. They don’t care…. Because they don’t fear. That’s pretty extreme and simplistic. But it rhymes. It is of course more serious than that, but respect for your parents was important.

I respected mine. I didn’t agree with many of the punishments I received or the seriousness of those punishments, or occasionally the extreme level of punishment, but I did understand. I learnt and in many ways I have not turned out too badly. However, this is the future. Right now (in this story) I am sitting in my room on the edge of the bunk with the door closed, straining to hear the conversations of my family members in the rest of the house. All awaiting the return of my father.

(continued tomorrow)