PUNISHMENT REMAINS A VERY QUIRKY BEAST

One bad move can turn your world upside down.

It's such a shame 'cause you've been so good up to now.

-- Song and sentiment by Lyle Lovett

Here is a story that I find sad, funny, a bit depressing and, in some measure, historically and philosophically revealing. Maybe it didn't happen, which spoils somewhat the dramatic buildup I've provided.

A friend of mine in Memphis, a lawyer, tells of a colleague who drove across Tennessee to argue a case before appellate judges in Knoxville. The man, as my friend tells it, is a very able attorney who didn't attend law school until after a tour of duty in Southeast Asia. He also has an ill-concealed lust for life.

Though it had escaped my attention until I heard the story, Knoxville is a city where a man with a lust for life is greeted warmly. The lawyer, an associate in tow, went out for a night on the town ... which turned into an early morning on the town ... ultimately to become dawn on the town.

As the story is told, the man had the presence of mind to change into courtroom attire, though in absence of sleep, he neglected to shave. At the courthouse, his body elected to cleanse itself of some of the poisons it had been subjected to during that long night, and it was in a lavatory that his associate, who wasn't in much better shape, came to the conclusion they might be in some trouble.

"They're going to kill us," said the junior lawyer. It was 10 minutes before the proceeding was to begin.

Having seen a bit more of life, the older attorney, coming up for air, took his situation in stride. "What are they going to do," he asked his colleague, "shave my head and send me back to Vietnam?"

In concise, hung-over eloquence, the lawyer in Knoxville spoke to the rather quirky nature of punishment. There was nothing an appellate panel could inflict on him for misconduct before the bench that was worse than what the government subjected him to simply for being a patriotic American male.

While this might have made his client uncomfortable, punishment of the verbal sort -- a scolding, a reprimand -- had lost its edge for this attorney. He conquered this fear, one we cultivate in childhood, and for conquering a fear we should be enormously pleased for him. Our reasoning tells us, however, that a planet full of this type of individual would be a nervous place.

I had to punish one of my children this week. It was nothing serious ... he just slipped a bit in his parents' desires to coax a little responsibility into his life, something I regret to say we dish out with water-dropper sluggishness anyway. Tolerant of pre-teen forgetfulness to a point, I was in the wrong mood and pushed too far.

Spare the rod and spoil the child, the saying goes. What kind of advice is that? A rod, to me, is a miniature pole ... something at times made of iron and inserted in concrete to keep highways from breaking up. I would go to great lengths to keep any child from getting hit by one.

To be honest, I have never really spanked my children, other than an infrequent singular swat on the bottom, more swift than solid, meant to startle more than sting. Maybe I'm a bad parent. Maybe my children are spoiled for being spared the rod.

In the case of my upbringing, it was a switch. My mother would direct this operation of corporal punishment, sending the offending child to the back yard to fetch, from a tree that thinned considerably during heavy periods of misbehavior, a small branch she would use on our backsides.

Though she must have struck me at some time during my childhood to raise in me the ultimate fear of this punishment, I don't remember it. What I remember quite clearly was the walk to and from that tree and the anxiety of the act it was leading to. Actually, I remember crying so hard by the time I returned with the switch that the licking wasn't carried out. I had punished myself, which is probably what my mother was counting on.

Since punishment is designed to set right an attitude, the most effective type is psychological. I lectured my son about responsibility the other night and by the time I was finished, he felt bad enough (or perhaps I had just rattled on too long) that I never got around to really meting out any punishment. As a parent aiming to punish a loved one, you sometimes end up feeling worse than anyone. Maybe that's what my son was counting on.

Life gets more complicated, and sitting in judgment gets no easier. Less than a year ago, Bill Webster, then attorney general of Missouri, sat in an office at this newspaper and discussed his aspirations to become governor. On Tuesday, he was assigned to go to jail.

For misusing tax dollars, Bill Webster now goes to a place where taxpayers will clothe, feed and shelter him. That's justice.

As mentioned previously, punishment is a quirky beast.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.