I was very well behaved in school. Even though I was a complete angel, sometimes I would get in trouble for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of these places/times was a quiet drill.
(See, what an angel) Teacher friends, do they still have quiet drills? When I was in elementary school, we would line up to go outside after lunch. If we did not line up quietly, they would make us go in the auditorium instead of going outside. In the auditorium you had to practice being quiet. You were not allowed to talk. Now that I think about it as an adult, it sounds like nonsense.
Anyway, some kids sitting next to me were talking during a quiet drill. If you were caught talking, not much happened except they would point at you and tell you to stop talking and pretend to write your name down. But even if they wrote your name down, nothing happened. The time that I was accused of talking, the other person accused was Sean. The ridiculous part is that I never would have talked to Sean. He totally had cooties.
The next day Sean's friends tried to make me feel guilty. They said that Sean's dad heard through the grapevine that he got in trouble and that he got a whoopin and that his dad put him in a cardboard box and threw him down the stairs. They said it was all my fault.
As ridiculous as their story was, I believed it. I went home and told my mom the whole story. The only response I remember is that she said that I was not allowed to say "Whoopin". She said that if she heard me say "Whoopin" again, I would get spanked.
Maybe I am confused, but isn't a whoopin the same as a spanking? I had forgotten all about this until I heard my friend use the term. Do you say spanking or whoopin? Did you get spanked or whooped as a kid? Which do you think sounds scarier?
