Bo's change of pace blog made me relive my whole lifetime of child abuse while reading his rather tame description of spanking.  I was always a big kid, so when Dad beat me, he used a closed hand rather than a palm.  I was fucking Bruce Lee blocking those arms so he would often unwind on me since less than half the impact was making it through my guard.  I never raised a hand against him myself in defense, even when I got my man growth at around 10th grade.  Even if I could take him (debatable) I'd have to kill his ass once we got started.

Two times I had the school call CPS on them and neither time was valid.  I was in third grade, living in Long Island and my father was raking leaves in the front yard.  I ninja'd around the side of the house and cannonballed into his leaf pile, scattering it around the yard.  I'm laughing like hell and he's highly annoyed, but still appreciating the humor of the situation.  Dad picks up a trash bag full of leaves and uses it like a flail, twirling it around his head.  "C'mere, you little fucker" and nails me with it in the face.

Now it's Dad's intention to hit me with a bag of leaves like a pillow.  Little does he know that at the very bottom of the bag is a glass coke bottle.  PLINK!  He lays me out unconscious on the front yard with blood everywhere in front of my mother and the neighbors.  All anybody knows (including my mother) is he said "little fucker" and now there's a blood covered unconscious kid in the front yard and he's standing over me with a bag of trash.

With Dad's history of beating as discipline, it was a cold bed in my parent's room even after the explanations.  The neighbors didn't call 911, but my father's legacy as "Crazy Paullet down the street" was cemented in neighborhood lore.

I had one eye closed up from swelling and the doctor put a couple butterfly bandages on it to close up the gash.  Two days later I went back to school.  The eye was mostly opened up and the bruise had spread across my face and was just starting to turn green and yellow at the edges.  It was gruesome.  My teacher took one look at me and said, "Tommy, what happened to your face?"

Now it's a fact that kids aren't good at giving details sometimes.  I said, "Oh, I jumped in my Dad's leaf pile so he hit me in the face with a bottle."  As an educator, I can just imagine the image that my teacher had in her head.  That scary guy at the teacher conference, drunk (my father doesn't drink and never has) and freaking out on a little kid for acting silly.  Then he pummled me in the face with a bottle of Kentucky Deluxe bourbon to teach me a lesson.

When I got home from school there was two helpful people that wanted to talk with me about daddy and the elephant man deformity of my face.  Dad commuted to Manhattan and didn't get home until I was in bed so they didn't get to talk to him while I was home.  I'll bet that was a good discussion though.