Opinion: Upbringing outweighs TV violence

Understand first that I did not grow up around violence. My father was basically a pacifist, a Methodist minister all his adult life, though he did have a temper, and six sons.

We never got beatings, but we did get our share of spankings.

At school, we would get “licks” — you’d be called up to the front of the class, told to bend over and the teacher would pull out a paddle and slap your butt two, three or more times, depending on the severity of your crime and the teacher’s level of frustration.

For the boys, the number of licks we got over the course of the school year was a badge of honor.

I don’t remember any girls getting paddled. I guess they didn’t see the sense in competing for punishment.

But even us boys preferred to avoid licks from the coaches. They tended to redden your butt, and your face as you tried to show your toughness, with much more powerful swings. At least one coach I remember had a paddle with holes in it, for an even deeper and longer-lasting sting.

I wasn’t a fighter growing up but I did play football, back when there were far less restrictions on how it was played and practiced. Once I landed a “shiver” (a hit using the forearm to just under the chin to “stand up” an open-field blocker) so hard that the blocker fell over and could barely get up.

While the coaches were telling him to shake it off as he staggered about in a daze, everybody was slapping me on the shoulder pads, saying “good hit” for just about knocking him unconscious.

I wasn’t much of an athlete, but I was proud of how hard I could hit. Never mind the concussions, it was a matter of pride.

Still, I was not a violent boy. I did pick on my little brother Jim sometimes, but I think he has since forgiven me. And my older brother Don did what he could to toughen me up, but he was really more inclined to be my protector than my protagonist.

Guess that’s the way brothers are, or can be.

Have you noticed how hard Americans have tried to tamp down the violence that my generation grew up with? Check out the hilariously violent Saturday morning cartoons of yesteryear and compare them to the ’toons kids now enjoy.

Even the live-action comedy The Three Stooges came back with a “don’t try this at home” disclaimer in its 2012 remake. It’s as if they heard my mother’s cries over the “rough-housing” that followed the Stooges’ violent escapades.

I defer to my dear ol’ ma about whether the Stooges were a bad influence on us, but even if it did make us want to hit each other with hammers to the head, it didn’t out-influence my parents’ say-so. They taught us a better way to resolve our differences, and those underpinnings far outweighed the make-believe violence we saw on TV or at the movies.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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