Being Grounded - Then and Now

I was watching television and eating chocolate when I saw him approach, and my insides did a backflip. When I heard the creaking of the gate, I felt nauseous. It was old Watson, and he was coming to my front door.

The reason for my anxiety was that the previous evening, some friends and I had played a particularly cruel prank on the old man. I'm sure you'll recognise the gag when I tell you we had placed a burning paper parcel on his doorstep, rang the doorbell, and then ran like Billy-o. This old chestnut is well known here in the UK, but it must also be a thing across the Pond, as Seymour Skinner fell victim to it in an episode of The Simpsons.

The doorbell chimed, and I heard my mother exchange a few words with Watson, and then, to my horror, she called for my father. A few minutes later, I heard the door close, and I watched Watson walk past the house. Then my dad called me into the kitchen in his best you're-in-trouble-young-man voice.

I presented myself and braced for the inevitable castigation. "That was a terrible thing to do," Dad said.

"Disgusting," Mother added, to show the parents were singing from the same hymn sheet.

"Do you know he was wearing brand new slippers?" Dad said, and I swear he was doing his utmost to stifle a laugh, as was Mother, who hurried out of the room and went upstairs. Dad regained his composure and handed down the sentence, which was grounded till Monday. This was Saturday afternoon, so I would be confined to barracks for two nights.

That evening, alone in my bedroom, I stared from the window into the darkness outside and I wondered what my friends would be getting up to. Perhaps they would perform the same prank on another victim if they could gather the wherewithal. More likely, it being a weekend, they would hang out at the coffee bar, and play pinball. Whatever they were doing, I'm sure they would be having a better time of it than me.

Utterly bored

After closing the curtains, I doodled in a notebook, and then I picked up a copy of Treasure Island, which I'd started reading to get me through the boredom of being grounded. I kept reading the same passage over and over, so I consigned the book to a drawer. Utterly bored, I considered getting out my Meccano set from under the bed but decided against it because I'd get bits all over the floor, and gathering them in is a chore.

I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, and then my mother entered, carrying a tray on which were two cheese scones, some biscuits, and a mug of cocoa. She placed the tray on a chest of drawers, enquired after my welfare, and, taking the grunt I offered by way of reply to be an indication that I was well, left the room, closing the door as she went. I felt like a prisoner in solitary confinement, and that solitude was the worst part of the punishment.

And that's how it went. The next day I missed out on the usual Sunday afternoon kickabout in the park with my friends, and I spent another night alone in the bedroom. You see, my father is very strict when it comes to chastising his only child, so there would be no time off for good behaviour for me. But, we can't stop the march of time, so as bored as I was, and as slowly as the hours passed, I completed my sentence and was returned to the fold.

That was many years ago, and today I found myself having to punish my own son, who had been sent home from school for swearing at a teacher. Remembering how much I had disliked being grounded, I handed down a similar sentence to Charlie, thinking a spell in solitary might cause him to consider his actions. "Off you go," I said, and he trudged up the stairs.

Later that evening, I passed his bedroom, and I heard laughter and music. I opened the door and saw that Charlie was playing a console game on his bedroom TV while talking to friends in a Zoom meeting on his laptop. I scanned the room to take in the Aladdin's Cave of tech to which I had banished my potty-mouthed progeny. Apart from the TV, games console, and laptop, he had an iPhone, an electric guitar, a drone with Go-Pro, and a mini fridge filled with chilled beverages and chocolate.

A spartan environment

Being grounded has certainly changed since those miserable sentences of my adolescence. The dread I felt at being confined in a spartan environment for hours on end, where the only activities on offer were reading a book or staring out of the window, hadn't been passed on to the following generation.

I ordered Charlie to leave off the game and to close the Zoom, and I began to lecture him on how different our respective groundings were, adding that modern confinement seemed more like a trip to an amusement arcade than a punishment. He laughed, opened an energy drink from the mini-fridge, and answered a call on his iPhone, which played The Simpsons theme as a ringtone. "Hi, Benji," he said, simultaneously answering and shooing me away with a wave of the hand.

I complied with his wish and left the bedroom telling myself that Charlie wasn't learning much of a lesson from being grounded in such entertaining surroundings, and that somehow, the tail was wagging the dog.