This experience of corporal punishment was delivered by my aunt.
My brother, Felipe, and I were staying with her, as our parents had gone away for the weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
If you can call what happened an overreaction, as I do, and did at the time, the stress of managing two unruly youngsters for my aunt, who was quite a bit older than her brother, my dad, perhaps explains it.
We had to share a room at her place, which we didn’t like at first.
But as we sat up late talking, there was a lot of giggling and laughter.
Twice, my aunt knocked on the door and told us to be quiet, which was fair enough as her room was next to ours.
At last, she commanded silence on the pain of punishment.
We made it about five minutes before the door flew open again.
“The talking is bad enough.
But the language I hear coming out of you two children is a disgrace!”
We blushed. We’d been swearing like sailors and not even realizing it.
We didn’t swear in front of our parents, but we’d let our filters down at our aunts place.
