The belt, the brother, the betrayal.
There are a lot of perks to being the youngest in the family. For starters, your parents are so exhausted from dealing with your elder siblings that all the rules are lax. In a large family, by the time the baby arrives on the scene the parents have given up most of their angelic ideals when it comes to children and perfection.
My family was no different.
I was the surprise addition to an otherwise happy, healthy family. There were six years between me and my nearest sibling. And while I was chronologically the baby of the family she had all of the same traits. This is understandable since she had enjoyed six years as the baby and wasn’t about to give up that birthright without a fight.
And there were plenty of fights!
Until the day came when she decided that instead of jockeying with me for the spoils of babydom she would leapfrog all of my siblings and take on the role of parent. This seems like an endearing quality until you understand her motives.
Her plan was to spank me!
You can imagine my reaction to her evil plot. Thankfully the eldest sibling was in the house to serve as judge and jury. And since he happened to also be my hero I had full faith that liberty and justice would prevail.
I make this sound like there was a lot of careful thought and discourse that went into this tragedy. In reality I ran screaming into the family room in the hopes that he would save me. He was in the middle of watching a western movie on one of three stations our antennae picked up.
It didn’t take long for him to render a verdict.
I barely got out the words, “Help me!” before he had me over his lap administering a spanking.
Time stood still…
I’d never been spanked by any of my siblings up until that moment. I understood how the biblical Joseph must have felt when his brothers threw him into a pit and decided to sell him into slavery.
Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad. 
Even so, I had been betrayed. And there would be hell to pay!
Normally I would simply turn an elder sibling into my parents and they would be held accountable, but that didn’t seem good enough. This was new territory for me and required immediate reprisals.
And since everyone in the house had lost their minds and decided to be the parent I decided to join in the fray.
My father was famous for threatening to spank us - but then never spanking us. He would parade around the house with the belt around his neck and for some reason that seemed to calm everyone down.
And so I went into his closet and grabbed the meanest looking leather belt I could find. If it was spankings people wanted, it was spankings they were gonna get!
Just as my father before me, I placed the belt around my neck with the ends almost reaching the floor. I then marched with the determination of a green beret into the family room and shouted a string of expletives at my brother who was still watching television.
And that’s when my plan fell apart.
Rather than sitting in the chair and being an easy target he decided to swirl around, jump out the chair, and come after me. I had not made any fall back plans and it sure looked liked I was about to get a second spanking.
However, my green beret training didn’t fail me. Without thinking I grabbed the belt and threw it at him. It seemed to be on target as he stopped dead in his tracks.
And then I saw the blood streaming from his face.
In an instant everything changed. The metal hinge on the buckle had struck my brother in the eye. And I was pretty sure he would be blinded for life.
My parents came home and took him to the hospital where he received stitches. Fortunately it was not going to be permanent damage and his eye would recover.
The experience gave me a whole new take on “an eye for an eye”. And it made me realize what happens when things escalate. You might start out just wanting to get enough revenge to feel better. But once you head down that road the melee that follows may go well beyond your intentions.
There are other good examples of what can happen when things escalate out of control.
When Indiana Pacers basketball star Ron Artest decided to head into the stands after being hit with a cup of water I am sure he wasn’t trying to get several of his teammates suspended. In the heat of the moment what he wanted was to even the score with the person who had wronged him. The result was that he attacked an innocent bystander and his teammates were suspended and their entire season thrown into a shambles.
In the end a cup of water cost the team a chance at an NBA title. In retrospect, not a very fair trade.
The adage of turning the other cheek takes into consideration all of the things we don’t. It doesn’t mean we should be cowards because there are times we must stand up and fight. However, most of the time the net effect of our short sighted revenge is far worse than whatever damage was done.
And that is what they mean when they say, “Discretion is the better part of valor.” Or as Kenny Rogers puts it, “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.”
Sometimes the only way to win a fight is to not fight at all.
-Mystery Cookie
“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” - Buddha