Hey, remember when they used to put people in stocks if they pissed off the rest of the people in the village? No… of course you don’t… you aren’t three hundred years old! It was a rhetorical question, for cryin’ out loud.
For those of you who are not historians, never read ‘The Scarlet Letter’, or even if you just slept through history class in school, stocks are a cool and very creative device that your ancestors… if you come from anywhere near Europe originally… probably used as a way of teaching good manners and civic responsibility to the other townsfolk. Stocks are made by taking two flat pieces of wood and then carving a half circle cutout on one edge of each of them. Then, you can slide the two pieces of wood into some slots cut into a pair of upright pillars, making sure the two cutout half circles are on the sides nearest to each other. Following me so far?
Then, when a villager misbehaves in some manner, you lift the top piece of wood a little so that he has room to stick his head through, and then push the top piece of wood back down so that the miscreant’s head is firmly lodged inside the hole formed by the two cut half circles. Then you lock the two pieces of wood together. Often, there were smaller stocks on either side to lock the hands in. And sometimes, the stocks were just hinged but not stuck into the posts, so the bad person could sort of wander around town with his hands and head stuck through some heavy pieces of wood.
Now that the criminal… who had obviously done something horrible to end up in this situation, like gossiping or not being frugal enough, or wearing white after Labor Day, or spit one or their loose teeth into someone else’s gruel… (You might think I am kidding about these offense, but in those days, they would hang you for stealing a crust of bread, or at least ship you off to America or Australia where all the other really bad criminals, ne’er-do-wells, rouges, knaves, varlets, highwaymen and bandits were sent)…
Anyway, the person thus being punished might stay helpless in the stocks for a day or a few days or more, subject to poor weather and their fellow villagers throwing mud pies and cow dung at them… It is often said that they would pelt the poor devil with rotten tomatoes and rancid cabbages, but I refuse to think of this as anything but urban myth… the poor people were not going to throw away food just because it was past its expiration date, and besides, expiration dates hadn’t been invented yet.
Where, I hear you thinking to yourselves, is he going with all this.
The other day I saw one of those bumper stickers that asks: ‘How is my driving?’
And I found myself thinking; ‘Who gives a crap… you are delivering a pizza, you aren’t delivering an organ to an emergency transplant or involved in a high-speed police pursuit!’
But then I found myself thinking… you know… like I do… and I thought that what I would really like to see is a 5-foot-tall orange flag welded onto the roof of some car that says: ‘I have been arrested for drunk driving three times… how the #%*& is my driving???’…
Pouring My Art Out 
I thought I wasn’t going to like this post, but then I got to the end – the great idea! Let’s publicly shame drunk drivers! Make them have a bumper sticker on their car that only a police person can remove! Make sure they have an identifier on their driver’s license, so if they use if for ID to apply for a loan or something, the bank knows they may not be the best applicant because they could get killed or kill others & end up in prison & not be able to repay the loan!
You just have to have faith in me…
I’m going to email you a pic with regards to this post.
yay
Did you get it?
yes I did
Yup you got it..Ha!
double yay… and sniff…
😉
yup
Or, you could just force an offender to start a blog, and then let nature take its course. And no, that’s not why I started my blog.
uh huh………
Actually, I’ve read that there are places where folks have to wear “I DROVE DUNK” sandwich signs around their local grocery store parking lots. I think it must be very effective.
There are places where they publish the names of guys who availed themselves of the services of prostitutes… and they still ‘cane’ people in some parts of Southeast Asia
They used to publish the names of folks involved in domestic disputes in the local papers where I grew up. That was pretty effective, too.
I like that idea
Yep, public humiliation does work in some cases. In some cases it just drives the behaviour and anger u nder the surface to re-erupt at a later date. I think the Soviets had it licked- they found a permanent solution. In their forced labor (concentration) camps they put the inmates together in groups of 4 or 5 as work parties for mining, canal building, etc. They had group quotas to meet for material moved or ore dug, etc. The food rations of the group was based on meeting quotas. Don’t meet your quota then your food ration, as a group gets reduced. Of course, energy available was reduced with reduced food, so the chance of ever meeting quota again was pretty low. Now here’s the kicker, missing quotas would get reduced food rations and other disciplinary action, however, it wasn’t against the rules to kill a fellow inmate (they were called “zeks”) .So, if the group had a member who was sick or lazy or weak – then that individual would be killed by the other members and a replacement would be assigned- no questions asked. This continued until the group was all strong and healthy men – kind of like a free draw in poker, until you got the cards you wanted.
How’s that for peer pressure?
I actually knew all about that, being a student of history and all… but that does seem a tad harsh… I do think that we can make minor criminals pick up trash along the freeways… naked…
That’s terrible. A friend of mine who survived Theresienstadt, a Nazi Concentration camp, fell very ill with typhoid, I think. He was a young man and the others in his work detail worked extra hard and he survived when most others died of it. Pepe lived to be about 70.
I like my story better, Paul, Yours is pretty horrible!
His happened to millions of people… yours is a rare exception… but yeah, it is nicer.
Crucifixion also comes to mind…
well it almost has to, doesn’t it…?
They won’t let us burn witches anymore either. They just ruin everything don’t they?
I know, right? And there are a lot of witches around these days too…
V: What do you burn apart from witches?
…
P3: Wood!
V: So, why do witches burn?
(long pause)
P2: Cuz they’re made of… wood?
V: Gooood.
…
V: So, how do we tell if she is made of wood?
…
V: Does wood sink in water?
P1: No
P3: No. It floats!
…
V: What also floats in water?
…
King: A Duck!
(all look and stare at king)
V: Exactly! So, logically…
P1(thinking): If she weighs the same as a duck… she’s made of wood!
V: And therefore,
(pause & think)
P3: A witch! (P1: a witch)(P2: a witch)(all: a witch!)
This recap of a Monty Pythin skit brought to you in the name of making Art’s blog more British.
blimey