The Corner

Today is my son's birthday. He turned 22 years old today, and I look at him, and think "where have the years gone?" I was sitting here in my office thinking back over the years and some of the memories, and suddenly the funniest memory comes back. Daniel was about 3 and a half years old, and I was watching him one day when he did something to misbehave. I really don't have a clue what it was he did, or did not do, but I do remember that Daniel has always been very strong willed and sometimes defiant. When he would get totally defiant, I'd make him stand in the corner, and put his nose in the corner. It really was not so much about his nose being in the corner, it was that he was not able to see what was going on in the room. He absolutely detested "the corner". I mean, he'd rather take a spanking than be made to stand in the corner. Sometimes the only way I could make him stand in the corner was to stand there right behind him and not allow him to turn around from that corner. It's quite comical now, to think that in order to "punish" Daniel, I had to stand there with him. But it served it's purpose.

Anyway, on this one particular day, I'd had it with his antics and I told him that he was just about do go to the corner. Still defiant, he told me he was NOT going to the corner, and I said, "That's it, 3 minutes in the corner!"  He began to scream and cry, "NO! Not the corner daddy! I don't want the corner! No!!!"  It was hard not to laugh then, and now, almost 19 years later, I'm still chuckling as I write this thinking, "how crazy is this?"  You'd have thought we were killing him or beating on him the way he reacted to the corner! Looking back, I still question, was it the shame of the corner? Was it the isolation? (Even though I was often right there with him.) What ever it was... that kid sure hated the corner.