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In a message dated 7/21/03 4:07:17 PM, OomYaaqub@... writes:

<< So, this person was a liar and/or hypocrite! But that doesn't mean
everybody
who spanks is. When I said I only did it in rare emergencies, I meant what I
said. I meant literal emergencies with the potential of death, like the
running in the street example. >>

You would like to have meant that. In retrospective you would like for it to
seem that's what you meant.

It's hard to justify spanking without being a hypocrite.
It's really difficult to justify spanking to THIS list without backpedalling
at least and retracting or painting over original statements.

It's baffling, and a little amusing, that you keep trying to do it.


There's a traditional story in New Mexico (and along some of the rivers in
northern Mexico), especially common in Northern New Mexico.

A version I heard in Tesuque, just north of Santa Fe, was told about a place
in an arroyo right below where I was living, and concerned the one tiny
grocery store in that town.

The story is generically called "La Llorona," and usually involves a baby
drowning in a river, but this town has no running water, just a deep arroyo, a
canyon where water only runs in heavy rains.

The mother had gone shopping and on the way back she had her baby in one arm
and her groceries in the other. She tripped and was falling and she didn't
want to drop the groceries, so she squeezed them really tight, but she
accidently squeezed the baby side too tight and the baby died. (So she moans and cries
at night, when the wind blows, because she misses her baby. All those
stories are told to explain wind-in-trees noise, and to warn children not to wander
around alone in the dark at night, and to take good care of babies.)

When you first told your spanking story, OomYaaqub@..., I thought about
how you AND la llorona might have just dropped the groceries to take care of
the baby. Maybe the life and death situations shouldn't value groceries so
highly.

If a child is too young to understand the difference between the road and
not-the-road, isn't he young enough to be carried in a backpack or a stroller?

Sandra