Monday, August 23, 2010

A brief lecture on lectures

As promised, today The Prude will share her thoughts on the Loveliness of Lectures.
Let that line ‘Loveliness of Lectures’ linger on your lips a little.  Some day the Prude will write on alliteration and its attendant something or other but first she needs to find synonyms for ‘great’ and ‘glorious’ that start with the letter ‘a’.

Back to lectures.  The Prude has always been a proponent of the lecture as a disciplinary device.  When the Prude’s children were small, and driven to various manifestations of their original sin, The Prude was hesitant to patch their pookets (see last Friday’s post for an explanation of this excellent term.) Although not opposed to corporal punishment, The Prude would need to nurse a stinging hand after each patchin’, while the Prudlings would chuckle and announce that their rock-like pookets hadn’t even FELT the patchin!

This brought The Prude back to her formative years.  The Prude’s mother was an advocate of patchins.  The Prude’s father infinitely preferred The Lecture.  Perhaps he, also, was a victim of delicate palms.  When I, only an embryonic Prude at the time, would exhibit infestations of original sin, my father would sit me down, look me in the eye, and tell me in five-to-ten thousand words why my particular sin was wrong. He would fill in with details regarding to whom the wrong was done and their consequent sadness, the sadness of my parents, pastor and the Lord, and why my continuation in this sin would only lead to bigger, deeper, stronger, and more serious lectures.

At this point The Prude’s mother would exclaim in exasperation: ‘Give her a patchin’ for Pete’s sake and get it over with!”  I heartily concurred.  But my father, determined not to skimp on my discipline, would bring the lecture to its full development including a summary paragraph and restatement of his thesis. 

The Prude will attest to the effectiveness of these lectures.  However, it will have to wait until tomorrow because The Prude is obediently adhering to lectures she has read in regards to keeping blog posts in the 200-300 word range. This post is already at 355 words, which sadly proves that not even lectures can totally eliminate original sin.

TOMORROW:  How lecturing differs from nagging and don’t let anyone tell you it doesn’t.

7 comments:

Robin Steinweg said...

Ah, the days of patchin the rock-hard pooket...

such fond memories you have brought back to me, of the lectures that followed these.

Bless you, Prude!

The Prude said...

For those of you not raised by a Dutch mother, 'patch' does not rhyme with 'hatch'
It sounds sort of like the vowel sound in 'splotch'. Not familiar with that either? How about 'botch'?

Tammy said...

Love your post... love lectures! Well, when I'm giving them.

Danielle said...

My mother's patchin's were done with a wooden paddle. No stinging done to her delicate hands and definitely no chuckles or announcements from us misfits that we didn't feel it! Haha. Lectures were usually done before or after the patchin by my mother. My father seemed to skip the lectures entirely as his hands were not very delicate. Although I am not looking forward to disciplining children whenever we have them, I am curious as to how my methods will differ from Sam's and how they will be the same. :)

The Prude said...

Danielle, can you imagine Sam NOT lecturing?
The wooden paddle idea is genius- think it is too late for Kaleb?

Unknown said...

I think his ear lobe says it is too late!

The Prude said...

Oh Sue- where did I go wrong?