“Do you want me to give you something to cry about?” “Don’t make me come back there.” “I will pull this car over right now.” “Don’t talk back to your Mother.” “I will knock your teeth right out of your mouth.” “Go to your room, I will be there in a moment with the belt.” I know that many of you will have a whole lot of great mushy moments with Dad that you remember, but for me these are some of the more often repeated quotes of Pop. Sounds a little strange in this day and age of raising kids with love and compassion, but it was my childhood and I would not have had it any other way.  See, for all Dad’s talk he could never convince me that he was that guy. It was almost as if he were putting on an act to somehow scare us into doing the right things.  Yes, he spanked me and he disciplined me in other ways, but it was never in an abusive manner. Grandpa, now.  He was abusive.  I doubt you could get my dad to admit it, but Grandpa used to really beat his kids.  My Dad tells stories of being slapped hard in the mouth in the presence of relatives and humiliated. I don’t say any of this to dishonor my Grandpa.  He was a good man and he was a sweetheart to everyone in the neighborhood and he had other amazing qualities.  He just really did not know how to handle all these boys that he raised, not to mention his daughter.  Some men back in the day did not know how to deal with kids.  They knew how to handle adults, but no one ever showed them exactly how to do the difficult job of raising their own children. I am not excusing abuse.  In fact, you could say that statistically Dad was all set up to be a major abuser.  I mean the statistics say that based on the environment that he was raised in he should have been a child abuser.  My Dad, was the son of an abuser, and therefore should have been an abuser.  But, that is not what happened. In regards to discipline, yes Dad used a belt, but he never lashed out at us kids.  He never launched at us with his anger and just hit us.  Instead he would tell us to go to our room and wait.  The waiting part was way worse than the actual whipping part I can tell you that.  Because after a few minutes (Now, I believe Dad used this time to calm down and take a few breaths) he would show up with belt in hand – Dad never forgot no matter how badly we hoped he would.  Then a funny thing would happen, Dad would take us over his lap and whip us with that belt very methodically counting out the whacks in a very precise manner making sure to match the amount with the size of the crime. We never had bruises on our rear or our back or legs.  Even though I was sure he was hitting me really hard, he never left a mark.  How is that?  Here is what I think.  I think Dad was doing what he knew.  He was using a form of discipline that was very popular back in my day (1970s).  But, it is as if he does not completely buy into it.  He seemed to hate doing this as much as we hated being spanked.  But then also he was doing something else.  Dad was refusing to carry on the chain of abuse.  He promoted this idea that yes if we do wrong it is going to hurt.  Did he threaten to knock our teeth out of our mouth – well yes.   But the joke is that for all of the threats, Dad never disciplined us any differently than “Go to your room and wait…” Sorry Pop if you are reading this, but now that I stand at a safe distance from you – me being in New York and you in Houston – I can safely say that you were all talk.  And, I can also safely say, that I am so glad that you were.  My Dad no longer threatens to knock my teeth out, but I generally don’t say anything to him that would make him want to say that to me.  One of the funnier times that he said this was shortly after getting my braces off.  I had beautiful straight, white, perfect little teeth that he had paid more than 2500 dollars to make that way, and there he goes saying he is going to knock my teeth out for being a smart-ass. I could not help but think of the irony of it all and so I smiled.  This of course prompted a trip to my room, but I was slightly amused the entire time realizing that this gentle, kind, compassionate man was not the angry, out of control, selfish individual that actually could and would hit his kid in the mouth so hard that his teeth actually fell out just because he said the wrong sorts of things. As a kid, I was scared of Dad, but the more I grew up the more I realized that Dad was trying to honor the tradition of raising little men in a world that was absolutely crazy at the time, but above all he was trying to love us the best way he knew how.  And he knew what that meant.  He knew that it meant, never lashing out in anger at us physically, he knew restraint, he knew that humiliation was not how you raise a child, he knew how to love my Mother no matter what.  He took us fishing and he went to our ball games and he worked his ass off for us at sometimes three different jobs. For all of the “teaching” Dad had been given on being a Dad, I am so grateful that he decided to do his own thing.  I learned so much from him and am proud to be his son.  Love you Pop, you’re still my hero.  Happy Father’s Day.