That very thing happened to my father.
When he came back home after serving in the army his passion was geology, but so many WWII veterans had pursued geology with their GI Bill education that Dad realized that he would have to embrace another field, or live on stone soup.
In the army he had been involved in communications and radios and realized that the blossoming field of electronics would prove to be a sound base to build his career upon. And so he moved the growing family to Klamath Falls and enrolled in the Oregon Institute of Technology, intent on becoming an electronics engineer. After a couple years he realized that he had learned enough that if he left school as an electronics technician, he could earn a good living for himself, my mom, and two older brothers.
So, he filed for his Electronics Technician Certification, made a couple sandwiches, and hitchhiked the 375 miles from Klamath Falls to Livermore and sat in an interview for a job at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore California. The formal job offer traveled from Livermore to Klamath falls faster than Dad’s thumb managed it.
He moved the growing family down to Livermore and added an additional boy to the family shortly after arriving in town. Three boys and no girls in the family, and the next thing you know, while Dad had been going to school to learn electronics, he spent more intense time and effort trying to raise three sons than he did working.
And so it turned out that while he thought he was focused on being a good husband, father, and provider, he accidentally became the world’s leading discipline expert.
I say accidentally because it surely wasn’t part of his life plan; I refuse to believe that when he was 16 or 17 he said to himself: “Self, you know, the thing you want most in life is to spend some significant portion of every day for 20 years struggling to create acceptable men out of puddles of protoplasm and by so doing become the world’s expert in disciplining boys”. Truth be told, like most young men between 15 and 25 raisings pack of boys was the last thing on his mind.
And I know that whatever thought he may have given to having boys when he was 16 or 17 it wasn’t: “Yep, three wild uncontrollable boys, that’s just what I want; one wouldn’t be any problem; and while two would demand my best, I could certainly handle two; No, it’s only if I have three pint-sized savages to protect society from that I can truly test my capabilities”.
Never happened; He was far too smart for that; At least back when he was 16 or 17. And yet, sometime between 17 and 27 things changed for him, or changed in him.
Mark Twain once noted that “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
Either my father used the years between 17 and 27 as exceptionally as did Twain’s father, or, more likely he found himself bamboozled by a pretty smile and alluring eyes. And the story of Mom and Dad getting together and married is a story all in itself; and in all honesty, there is more than a little Alluring eyes, plotting, and the jaws of a trap involved. But, sooner or later, most men knowingly walk into that trap.
Now maybe by 27 Dad was already beginning to lose some of his reasoning skills. Perhaps the odd synapse misfire here and there was already beginning to plague him, I really can’t say, but one thing is for sure, at some point, he lost his ability to reasonably extrapolate the logical consequences of siring a complete gang of boys all by himself.
A Gang, literally and figuratively. Three wild-eyed, uncontrollable, savagees with far too many smarts and far too little common sense. Think about it, three energized mini-men who had none of the usual societal controls. Awfully egotistical he was.
John Dillinger?: one man.
Bonny and Clyde?: Two anti-social savages
The Vandermolen Boys?: Three monsters dedicated to doing “it”. Whatever that was at anytime of any given day.
In fairness, I suppose instead of blaming it on my dad’s failing reason, I should blame a fair portion of this on my mother. For after all, if there is anything in the world that can turn around the thinking of a young man, for good or bad, it is a young woman. Or suspend thinking altogether for that matter. And after-all she is the one that wanted to try a third time for a girl (see: Mom Wants a Girl).
Whatever the cause, Dad found himself with more discipline on his plate than was reasonable. And not because Mom didn’t help. Yes, at times we heard from her; “Wait until your father gets home”. But in fairness, as I recall it was only after a particularly agregious act on our part when she had already issued some form of pumishment but still wanted to prolong our agony.
Now I have to hand it to Dad. He was more than a “one trick pony”. Yep, he could figure out more ways to punish a boy than you can shake a willow switch at.
I don’t know if he got all that creative simply to relieve the mind numbing boredom of issuing the same punishment three times a day every day, for months at a time; or if he really thought that by mixing it up he would somehow get through to us.
Let’s see, there was the old standby “the belt”, “digging holes in the yard”, time-out in our rooms (often without dinner), standing on a top fence rail, straightening nails, and of course the classic “pencil dot on the wall” among others.
And no, mowing the lawn, cleaning out the gutters, washing the car, sweeping the garage, weeding the garden, cleaning up the dog dung, washing windows, vacuuming the house, and washing dishes were not punishments.
They were work a day chores that we did in exchange for the groceries we consumed like a flash mob of locusts, or for the clothes we wore, and a dry place to sleep.
Dad spent more money on belts than all the rest of his clothes combined, and he always bought them used. In fact, I think one of the reasons he was such an avid garage sale fanatic is that at nearly every garage sale you went to you can buy up old belts for 3 for a quarter back then. And Dad bought those things in bulk any chance he got.
Want to know anything about the physics of rotational motion?; the tinsel strength of cow belly versus splits?; the average wear of a 3/16th inch think piece of leather? Ask my Dad. He ran extensive studies on the subject. Nightly.
He wore out belts with astounding regularity.
And he optimized them too. Trimmed those things he did. Reduce the wind resistance, improved the impression…..in more ways than one.
When he was short on belts; or when his arm was suffering another bout of tennis elbow, rotator cuff tear, or bursitis of the wrist. Say after a long rainy season when the garage sales had been few. Or a brief uptick in “experiments” my brothers and I had been running. Dad shifted to the pencil dot on the wall.
I know, doesn’t sound very intimidating, nor particularly harsh. But truth be told, I would rather dig several holes in an old dirt driveway than have been given the old pencil dot on the wall routine.
Come punishment time, Dad would have us stand facing a wall, up close, nice and straight, like tin soldiers on parade. Then he would take a standard pencil and make a small round dot on the wall, just a bit more than an inch above where our nose level was.
The punishment was to put our nose on the dot and stand there. Straight-backed; hands at our sides. Never leaning against the wall, just touching it lightly with the tip of our nose. Right over that dot.
The only way to do that is to raise you heels up off the floor by just an inch. Now standing full up on the balls of your feet is easy, but raise the heel just an inch and hold it there?
Tired set in in a minute or two.
Fatigue set in shortly thereafter.
Serious discomfort was close on its heels if you’ll pardon the play on words.
And delirium and delusions weren’t far behind.
15 minutes of that will put some calf muscles on you, you bet.
Dad’s favorite timeline was 30 minutes
Thanks to that and backpacking, most of my life my calves have been larger than most women’s thighs.
© Copyright 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
