Spanking On 1950s Television

           

            Tuesday, August 9th was another hot day.

            In the evening I took my bike ride. They are continuing to paint the stupid markings to delineate the stupid bike lane they’ve created on Bloor Street. I would really rather have the parking on the right so there can be room to maneuver in the bike lane.

            I finished exploring all of the streets south of O’Connor between Greenwood and Linnsmore.

            On Queen Street a trio of horn players were doing a funky jazz instrumental of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”.

            I was exhausted when I got home, probably because of the heat. I was only able to watch one episode of I Love Lucy. This one featured the second spanking that Lucy got from Ricky. Watching it, I wondered how many spouses were actually influenced to also administer spankings to their partners, because the show made it seem almost ordinary. Or did the show simply reflect what was already ordinary at the time in North American households? In all the years of my childhood, though my parents yelled at one another a fair amount, I never saw my father hit my mother, except for once, when he spanked her, in a very similar way that Ricky spanked Lucy. My mother was redecorating the dining room and they were arguing about it. In retrospect, I think that at the time, my mother was going through menopause. At one point, in the midst of an argument, very uncharacteristically, my mother started hurling china at my father. He grabbed her, turned her over his knee and spanked her right in front of me. I don’t remember if my sister was there at that time or not.  My mother never threw plates at him again and he never spanked her again.

I was so tired and hot that I went to bed right after dinner.