Whip it, whip it good.

When returning from Philadelphia to DC via Greyhound bus earlier today, I had the pleasure of sitting in front of two women who decided to talk very loudly for the entire 3 hour trip. For most of the ride, I managed to drown them out with music or ignore them; however, when they started talking about beating their kids, I couldn’t help but listen.

The first woman started reminiscing about the beatings with laughter in her voice. It seems that whenever her children anticipate a thrashing, they put on many layers of clothing to soften the blow. Of course, she’d always catch them trying to protect themselves, and would make them then strip down so that nothing would come between her fists of fury and their skin. She and the other woman had to admit, their children’s futile attempts to protect themselves sure were cute.

She then started giving examples. One time, she had to beat her kids for “stealing.” It turns out that when she said “stealing”, she meant that one of her kids ate some stuffing before it was served at dinner time. Although she didn’t see her kids actually commit this heinous crime, she gathered them together, threatened to call the police, have them fingerprinted to determine the culprit, and send them all to jail. The kids were so frightened that they could actually go to jail for “stealing” some food before it was officially served that one confessed, and then the woman took the child, in tears, and beat him. Are you taking notes? Eating stuffing before it’s handed to you = getting the stuffing beaten out of you.

The other woman, chuckling at the first woman’s stories, then piped in with her own adventures. Apparently, she was mad at her kids for not keeping the house clean so she told them all they would be sent to foster homes. She made them pack their bags, put on their coats and lined them up at the door. Apparently, the kids were all in tears, and one of the 6 year olds handed her mother a picture of the two of them and said, “Don’t forget me”. I was pretty moved by that imagery, but not the women: they just kept on laughing. Apparently, physically and emotionally abusing children makes for some great laughs. Well, I wasn’t laughing, (and in fact, I was pretty mortified), but maybe my problem was that I just didn’t get it, or maybe I “had to be there.” Yeah, that’s probably it….