I had an objectively bad childhood, but being told to go get a switch off a tree is like... super fucking common where I'm from (rural Arkansas). Maybe not anymore, but it was when I was a kid (I'm in my late 20's).

Like, we'd be at a church potluck and some father would bring up something bad his child had done and do the whole speech of "so I sent him out to pick his switch" and everyone laughed. I always will remember that, everyone laughing. It's why I knew they wouldn't help me.

Maybe it's not a huge sample size, since a lot of the population of the US is city folk, but everyone I know that "grew up out in the country", anyone who had farm animals or ever cut firewood or planted a big garden...being told to go get a switch happened to everyone.

We went to shitty public schools and almost everyone was poor and it was great to make rich friends because their parents didn't scream or hit their children in front of us like practically everyone else would. Violence was totally normal.

There are, even now, popular country songs which speak longingly of a time and place where people fight in parking lots and no one calls the cops.

Violence is romanticized here.

I never even think of my mother as hurting me and she hit me with a wooden spoon more times than I could ever count. My father was just a lot worse.

A huge part of this country doesn't know how the other half lives, but practically everyone that grew up in the middle of nowhere, America, with poor parents, is not going to be surprised if your parents used to hit you with a belt or a switch from a tree.

And anyway, a smart kid wouldn't take a long time to find a switch. The longer you waited the more you got hit. People that beat children sometimes admire bravery, as my father did, so I'd jet outside and have a branch off of a maple tree inside of two minutes.

Being told to get your own switch was also, though, a measurement of restraint on the parental end. If you were really gonna get the shit kicked out of you they'd just grab you by your hair or shirt of throat and yank you up, they wouldn't bother with the theatricality of choosing your implement.

So in a real way, being told to pick your own switch was less horrifying than many of the alternatives. It meant that they were probably in control of their emotions.

I feel like the dialogue around spanking often consists of people talking past each other, using different definitions of words. And people are emotionally invested, of course.

I don't think my dad bruising my ears or lifting me by the throat was spanking, but I do consider my mom hitting me with a wooden spoon (there was one hanging on the wall, it was never used for cooking) to be spanking. And there are millions of people who had their mothers, who they love, hitting them with wooden spoons.

In the modern age, people are thinking about what they're doing, and why. In the past, people did what they saw other people do. (I am drastically oversimplifying to make a point).

If an adult were assaulted as many times as the average child is, we would consider that adult exceptionally unlucky. Only in domestic relationships are people assaulted hundreds of times. I think people need to think about that, when they're thinking about the rest.

The country and world is full of people who have been taught by their parents that violence solves problems.

I know people who wouldn't ever hit an adult but who will kick their dog. I know people who kick their dog but who would never hit their children. I know people in prison for nearly killing their children. I know people in prison for killing their lovers or their brothers or their fathers. Who the hell knows why any of it happens?

When we casually accept any kind of violence, violence springs up in the human spirit. That, anyway, is what I believe. I have to constantly strive to not be violent because in my instincts it is the logical and immediate recourse. I do not believe that is human nature to be violent or to form violent societies, but I believe that a lot of humans realize that violence is simple and effective.

And the way we treat the powerless says a lot about ourselves.

I learned a lot of lessons from being hit while I grew up but the world would be a better place if I didn't learn a thing from it.

That's the fucked up part. Violence DOES teach lessons. They just aren't the lessons that are trying to be taught.