There’s a whole series of photos of my sister around the age of five, where she has a band-aid right in the middle of her forehead. Legend has it that we were playing a game together. I didn’t agree with the outcome so I went to the kitchen, brought a big spoon, and whacked her on the forehead. I don’t remember this but it’s not hard to believe. I don’t remember if any punishment followed, either.
Parents debate punishment and consequences a lot. Related consequences are all the rage. You use the stick to hit someone, the stick is taken away. If you use the stick to hit someone but the ice cream is taken away, that’s punishment and apparently children aren’t able to make the link between the two until a certain age. It’s not always obvious what the natural consequences of actions should be though, when you’re the one enforcing them. I’m a god in my children’s world, but I myself am unfamiliar with logical outcomes. It’s not something I grew up with, like pets. We didn’t have those either. A good rule of thumb is: if you’re a parent, you’re probably doing it wrong.
I’m a millennial, so I’m acutely aware that everything that happens is my personal fault. Millennials don’t have time for childhood trauma. We’re too busy working overtime for free, not owning property, and trying to figure out where to put the bag and stuff. My dad considers himself to have won when he shouts so loudly that nobody else wants to speak any more. He once compared his role as a father to that of a general in the army. My mom maintained the air of mystery by randomising related consequences with disproportionate unrelated punishment. Life’s a box of chocolates.
I want to talk to you about my favourite fuckup. It might not even sound so bad: I had to apologise. But oh, did I feel it. It was made all the more effective because I got to witness the consequences of my actions in real time. Let’s start at the beginning (a very good place to start).
My sister and I went to the school my mom was teaching at. Everything we did wrong would immediately get back to her. It didn’t stop me. My mom was my form tutor. Sasha was spared from that fate by being a year above me. I didn’t interact much with her at school, but knew everything about her goings on because I religiously read her diary. I didn’t even care that much, but still read it.
She tried to write in code, I figured it out. She tried to hide it, I always found it. She tried to measure the distance from the diary to other objects on the desk to make sure she knew if it had been moved. I figured it out and started measuring the distances to nearby objects too and place it in exactly the same spot again. I’d copy things from there into my own diary. I was reading my own diary from 2006 recently. I read it to her on the phone: “I read Sasha’s diary. She wrote in there A LIST OF BOYS SHE LIKES! Here it is.” And I copied the list. 16 years later she couldn’t remember who half of those people were and we laughed and laughed.
I’ve never met anyone as good natured as her. Sometimes I mistake relationships I’m in for being mutual, but the truth is everyone is much kinder and more forgiving to me than I am to them. Not a villain, just a pain in the ass.
I was a year younger than everyone else in my form. They let me skip a year and go from the fourth form straight to the sixth. They said it was because I was such smarty pants. I wonder if they just decided it was unfair someone else had to deal with me when my mom was right there (this is a joke, I think). The point is that when a new boy who was held back got transferred to our school, he was two years older than me, not just one. Let’s call him Ben. His real name is Russian, but I’m not Dostoevsky, I haven’t earned the right to make you read Russian names for the sake of my art or whatever this is.
Ben was like 15, which was, of course, very old. This boy was a huge badass. He smoked cigarettes and we knew he drank beer after school sometimes. He didn’t really try to make friends, though he wasn’t mean or antisocial, just quiet. Honestly he was just a normal 15 year old boy but me and my sister united in a completely unfounded vendetta against this kid. She didn’t even know him! I barely knew him! I remember having full conversations with her at home about this kid, before either of us ever had half a conversation with him.
We decided that since he thought drugs were so cool, we had to teach him a lesson. We had many plastic baggies from our extensive bead collection, which we put a little flour in. To the untrained eye it looked like cocaine, it was truly the height of comedy. The plan was to slip it into his planner, he’d then discover it and be really confused as to how a class A drug made it into his possession. Laughs all around. What we didn’t account for is that Ben was unlikely to be looking into his planner. He didn’t care about schedules. Ben was a bad egg.
It did get discovered though. On Fridays our planners were collected by our form tutors for inspection. As I told you before, it so happened that mine and Ben’s form tutor was my poor mom. We were sitting in our German class when my mother came in and asked Ben to step outside in a very stern tone. Even better! - I thought. Now adults were involved. How fun! I had no fear of god then. That was before. Ben came back into the room fifteen minutes later looking white as a sheet. Everything okay, Ben? I laughed. I’m a fucking monster, you guys. I thought it was a really funny misunderstanding until I found out that Ben’s parents were called, he was signed up for a drug test, and reported to the principal.
In one fell swoop I managed to embarrass my mom, stress out Ben’s parents, our school principal, and terrify Ben. Much like Raskolnikov I found that the consequences of my actions didn’t make me feel the way I thought they would. I. Felt. BAD. Not bad enough to come forward, but fate sorted that out for me.
Before Ben’s planner was collected, parents were called, and drug tests were booked, my sister thought it would also be funny to do the same thing to someone in her form. But Sasha wasn’t made for the life of crime. She was caught trying to slip a similar baggy into her classmates backpack. I don’t remember exactly how it went.
(“Are you stealing?” “It’s not what you think! It’s just drugs!” I hope.)
Unfortunately for Ben it took a few hours for the grapevine to do its thing, and for the adults involved to realise that he was just being pranked. But they did, and then hell rained down on me. Imagine being my mother. You raise them, you love them, and then they embarrass you this way. Imagine being Ben’s mother! Your son is a junkie. Oh jk, he’s not, he is being set up by MY idiot kid.
I’m sure my punishment was in multiple parts but one thing I remember very clearly. I had to call Ben and apologise. And when I tell you it stung, it STUNG. I didn’t like Ben, I didn’t want to apologise. What made it even worse was that I knew I had fucked up. I made that phone call, explained myself badly in a shaky voice, and said I was really sorry. Ben said no sweat.
Many years later Ben and I had beers and smoked cigarettes together, and laughed about it all. We were never friends but he turned from someone I didn’t understand into a sort of ally. I still think warmly of Ben, even now, and think about how even he was much kinder and more forgiving to me than I ever was to him. In my mind that was the day I learnt how amazing it can be, just to apologise. Most times when I have to apologise for something I truly feel bad about, I think back to that phone call and how hard it was to make. But I’m also reminded how that apology and Ben’s good humour set me free and turned something mean (albeit much worse than intended) I did into a fun story for us all.
The older generations love to comment on our commitment to related consequences and to avoiding punishment. We raise weak kids. We’re pushovers. The next generation is going to be soft, unprepared for life’s trials. Well, I disagree. Nothing hardens you like facing your own shittiness in a way you can really feel. Crime and Punishment is really just the greatest parenting book ever written.
P.S. Actually thinking about it now I’m not sure if my sister ever was punished for what we essentially planned and executed together… be right back, gotta call mom.
"A good rule of thumb is: if you’re a parent, you’re probably doing it wrong." LOL yup.
We went through a parenting phase of forcing our kids to apologize to each other, which, as expected, resulted in anger-screams of "I'M SORRY, OKAAAYYYY?!!?" and then we made them try again and again until they sounded contrite. I didn't love that because obviously we were just teaching our kids how to be good actors, so we stopped.
So far they seem to have turned out okay...unless they're exceptionally good actors.