Donzerly Light: Childhood Punishment

Getting in trouble as a kid is pretty standard stuff. At some point or another, most kids have broken the rules or made a mistake and have been punished for it. I say “most kids” because I know there are kids out there that don’t get in trouble no matter how they behave. It’s like they’re already rich, white men and they haven’t even finished high school yet.

I should preface this all by saying I have no children of my own. That either means that I’m able to share an unbiased viewpoint on the subject or it means I have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe both of those things are true at the same time? Either way, I’m going to keep yakking about it.

When I was growing up, if you didn’t eat the food on your plate, you couldn’t get up from the dinner table. Also when I was growing up, I wanted to be just about anywhere but the dinner table. For the life of me, I can’t remember why though. I mean, it’s not like there was anything else to do. The internet didn’t exist. We didn’t have cable TV yet. I sure as shit wasn’t going to go outside. As much as I wanted to get up from the table, I feel like that rule might have been more of a punishment for anyone who wanted to use the dining room table the rest of the evening. Maybe someone wanted to play solitaire and they couldn’t because I was sitting there staring at a room temperature bowl of chili.

I remember I got grounded for a couple weeks when I was 11 because I was home alone on a weekday in the summer and I got bored so I decided to ride my purple bike to my aunt and uncle’s house and surprise them. My uncle wasn’t there when I showed up, but my aunt sure was surprised. Mostly because they lived about five miles outside of the town I grew up in and to get there, I rode my bike on a two lane highway for a couple miles and then about three miles of gravel roads. Can you imagine what was going through the heads of the drivers that passed me? Now, people would have called DHS or the police or something. Then, people mostly just didn’t notice and if they did, they didn’t really go to much effort to not run me over. It was the 80s. People were too busy to give me a wide berth!

When I did get punished, I didn’t really understand why. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t get hurt and my aunt was STUNNED when I walked into her kitchen. Mission accomplished! If the internet existed when I was 11 years old, I definitely would have been catfished by some huge perv. And when my parents found that I’d been communicating with whichever member of the Gaetz family found me online and read our correspondence, I would have told them that it wasn’t a big deal because I was fine and this creep lives all the way in the Okefenokee Swamp, or whatever code word for Florida that they used back in the day.

I distinctly remember getting into trouble as a kid and thinking, “When I’m a grown up, I’m going to do whatever I want and no one can stop me.” I’ve got news for my younger self: you’re an idiot. Also, you won’t be rich or straight enough to do whatever you want to when you’re an adult in America.

Here are a few childhood punishments that have aged like a fine wine.

• No WWF (I know it’s called WWE now, thanks) for a week – When I was in middle school, I was deeply into pro wrestling. My friends and I would put on wrestling matches in my parents basement and we had outfits and even a championship belt. I watched every second of pro wrestling that I could find on TV. I would leave social functions to go and watch pro wrestling! Anyone who knows me now knows that adult me would leave a social function because the wind changed direction, but back then, I loved a gathering. Anyway, my older brother and I got in trouble once for some reason that I don’t recall. We were probably fighting about how he thought it wasn’t fair that I got the looks and the brains. Whatever it was, my parents had enough of our nonsense and told us both no WWF for a week. As a kid, this was some class-A bullshit because it was more of a punishment for me than for my brother as he had only a passing interest in WWF. As an adult, I go months, years even, without watching WWF. If someone told me I couldn’t watch WWF for a week, I would assume they were talking to someone else. Also, everything is on streaming now and I’d just catch up when the week was through.

  
  

• Laying in bed all day – When I was in the second or third grade, my parents were in one of their church phases, where we’d have to go to church every week because they wanted to rub elbows with ole’ JC because they’d been arguing or something. I remember running in the church (not the actual sanctuary, but the hallway near the Sunday school classrooms) because I was apparently moved by the spirit. Someone told me to stop and I was all like, “Sure, Jan,” and then started running again. Then my dad stopped me and said that when we got home, I was going to spend the whole day in bed. At the time, I felt that had strong Judas vibes. Now, I’d be honored to lay in bed all day. Give me a book and a drink and I’d feel like I was on vacation and/or being rewarded by the holy spirit for the gobs of benevolence that toss out into the world like I’m in a convertible during a parade.

  
  

• Curfew put in place – At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I didn’t have a curfew. I don’t know if that was because my parents trusted me or if it was because they figured that no curfew meant that I would be home less often. The day after Thanksgiving, my brother, who was home from college, used his fake ID to buy me and my friends some beer. I think we bought a 12-pack to split among three people. After a lovely meal at Pizza Hut, my friends and I went out “drinking,” where we each maybe had two beers. I didn’t keep track, but I know we didn’t drink them all because we buried them in a snowbank outside of town to “keep them fresh” for more drinking the following weekend. After I got home that night, I proceeded to vomit Pizza Hut all over my bedroom floor and as a punishment, a midnight curfew was instituted. These days, I could stay out past midnight if I wanted to, but it would also ruin the next week of my life – even if I’d consumed no Pizza Hut and zero beers. I stayed out past midnight two months ago and I’ve had a cold ever since.

  
  

• Chauffeuring my younger brother – The summer before I started college I was doing that thing where you sleep until 11am everyday and taking it for granted. I somehow managed to piss my mother off and as a punishment, I had to drive my younger brother to baseball camp every morning for a week. Keep in mind, this baseball camp wasn’t just on the other side of town or anything. It was two towns over! A 36-mile round trip! And he had to be there at 8am every morning. And I had to go back and pick him up every day at noon! My God, the orphans from Annie were basically socialites compared to what I was being put through. If I had to drive him to baseball camp now, I’d probably resist just because it would seem like I was an accessory to some unseemly behavior, with him being in his 40s and all.

  
  

• No Mall of America for me – When I was a senior in high school, our class took a senior class ski trip to a resort on the upper peninsula of Michigan. As you might expect, two-thirds of the class smuggled alcohol on the trip. A couple of my classmates didn’t, instead opting to go to the bar at the ski resort and asking a couple of guys in the bar to drive them to a nearby town and buy them booze. Obviously, the bartender told our chaperones and called the high school principal back in Iowa, and we all got busted. As a punishment, on the drive back home, anyone who had been busted for bringing alcohol on the trip was not allowed to go into the Mall of America when we stopped in the Twin Cities. That was a real slap in the face back then. Now, if my options were 500 American dollars and a trip through the MoA or zero American dollars and doing almost anything else, I’d take the zero dollars option, no questions asked. If someone blindfolded me and told me they had a surprise for me and then, when I took the blindfold off, realized I was in the Mall of America, I can’t see how or why I’d ever talk to that person again. They could push me off a cliff and I’d be more likely to give them a second chance. But if that cliff was next to the Mall of America and I rolled down the hill, right into the Crayola Experience, they’d never see me again.

Takeaway Quote of the Week

“Why are you so sweaty?” – Dale Doback (John C. Reilly)

“I was watching Cops.” – Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell)

The cast of Step Brothers, learning from others mistakes.

Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.