Why my mother owns no yardsticks

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, there were yard sticks in my house.

There were probably 3 or 4 of them. One was painted orange. One was a dull green. All were faded. They were wooden, made back in the day when things, including toys, were made of wood or metal. They had probably lived long lives in a classroom some place. They were kept on top of the refrigerator, which was then just within my reach. I think mom had picked them up at a garage sale somewhere. Maybe she thought they were educational. They weren't practical for measuring anything. But they did get used.

Mom broke each and every one of them hitting one of my brothers. Not to say I never got hit with any of them. I just don't remember that part as clearly. (I have vague recollections of parrying a swing.) Maybe mom figured the sticks worked best on the younger two: I remember their encounters a bit more clearly, though I'm not sure if that's because they were more often the targets, because there was more screaming and crying involved, or because it did something to me to watch that. But it's what I remember.

Perhaps the vintage of the yardsticks made them brittle. One shattered into three pieces after connecting. Would have been nice if the end of the stick meant the end of the beating. But that wasn't always the case. Sometimes it continued as spanking. Other times, a remaining fragment was still long enough to be useful. It seemed to make her madder any time the stick broke.

The irony is, of course, that I can't remember exactly why any of my brothers got hit with the stick. I'm sure it was something punishable. But twenty years later, the only lesson that persists is that wooden yardsticks can be used to spank people, and that spankings with sticks leave kids terrorized and sobbing.

I don't know what the original motive was for bringing the damned things into the house. But if you place the broken pieces back on top of the fridge, you're not putting away a thing you intend to use for measuring.

I remember a stretch in which she went through a couple in a few days. I remember the fragments of one demolished stick with red and black writing filed vertically in the trash can, so as not to puncture the bag, a visible reminder of why the house was now quiet.

I learned about proximity and delay early on. She's got a stick, and she says "come here". You can get hit now, or hold out, and get hit later, and possibly more severely, since she'll be more pissed off cuz you didn't come when called. We always chose to hold out.

Psych class, 12 years later: "Humans would rather suffer a big pain later than a small pain now."

Ya don't say.

When I grew up to be an athletic boy, I laid down a new law: No more hitting.

At first, it was taken as "He means himself".

So I began to intervene. Intervening consisted of putting myself between her and the sibling in question and shoving my rather un-coordinated and tubby mother to the ground as often as required until she lost the intent to hit someone. Can't beat kids when you're on your fat ass.

Eventually, my brothers got big enough.

Mom never bought new yardsticks.