When I was 14 I had gotten my hands on a Playboy magazine. This was the early 90s and pornography wasn’t nearly as easy to come by as it is today. The magazine was a big deal to me at that age and it got a lot of, uh, …attention.
I hit it under my bed. It seemed like as good of a hiding place as any. I never worried that my mother was going through my room. But one evening I reached under my bed to grab it and it wasn’t there. I was completely perplexed about where it had gone. I couldn’t imagine that if my mother had found it, she would just take it and not say anything to me. Then it dawned on me that maybe my sister had found it.
Several days went by, and then one afternoon my sister insisted on giving me a ride home from school even though I usually got a ride home with a friend’s parents. When we were alone in the car, she told me there was something she wanted to talk to me about. She said I might already know what it is. After a bit of a pause, I asked, “Something that was under my bed?”
She told me that not only was it really inappropriate for me to have that magazine, it was also illegal. She said she was very angry at me and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. She said she thought it might be best in this case to just tell our mom and let her punish me. I immediately responded that I wanted her to punish me instead. I was surprised by how easily those words came out of my mouth, asking my sister to punish me.
She warned me that she wouldn’t go easy on me. I still accepted that I wanted the punishment to come from her.
She said that the first part of my punishment is that I’m grounded for six weeks. I had never been grounded that long and I was a little shocked. I started to feel tears in my eyes and was embarrassed that she made me cry. She reminded me that I had plans to go on a weekend camping trip with some friends in a few weeks, and she told me I would have to cancel that. That’s when the tears started really flowing. I thought maybe the fact that I was crying would get me some sympathy at least, but she just commented that I ought to cry because what I did was really a bad thing.
The next part of my punishment was that she was going to give me some anti-pornography material to read. She wanted me to actually read all of it and then write her at least a two page letter apologizing for having the magazine and explaining why I understood that pornography was wrong. She said that as added motivation for me to take it seriously, if she didn’t think my letter was good enough she would extend my grounding to eight weeks.
At the time, I had a small paper route which earned me approximately $20-25 per week, depending on how well people tipped. It seemed like a lot of money back then. My sister told me the third part of my punishment was that for the six weeks I was grounded, she would take all of my paper route earnings and it would be donated to a anti-women’s-violence group.
She finished my telling me that having the magazine would cost me my freedom and my money. We pulled into the driveway shortly after that and before we went inside she told me she wanted me to accept my punishment and apologize to her. We sat in silence for a moment. I was angry about my punishment and I was still crying a little.
As I started to apologize, the tears started again, and in between sobs I told her I was sorry for having pornography in the house. I felt like I meant it. I told her I accepted the punishment and even thanked her for not telling our mom.
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