Childhood memory I'd rather not have =D

Childhood memories can be happy and magical.
It was a wonderland of discovery and invention, and some days stand out more clearly than others. Smells and tastes are very good at triggering a moment of cosy nostalgia.
Some memories aren't so joyful, though. As a child raised by a single-parent strict Catholic, guilt and paranoia play a large part of my own.
Yes, you remember certain punishments for dire transgressions, but there is one act which stands out and is branded onto my brain forever.
One inflicted punishment for which there was no crime.
There are many of us out there who have suffered in silence and for us there is no group or counselling.

To the parent, the deed can be innocent enough, and often is used as a last resort to keep family life running smoothly.
I don't suppose my mother realised how horrible it was to me, and I know it was hard raising three girls alone, one of whom was mentally handicapped by febrile convulsions and a very bad doctor.

No. She did her best and I will never criticise her for that, but there is one thing which I have NEVER done to my own children - THE SPIT WASH!

Picture the scene. You are ready to go out, coats on, shoelaces tied, Hair reasonably tidy, then Mother spots a smudge of dirt on your cheek because you were "looking at" the glittery bits of coal in the scuttle while she was busy with your sisters.
[When you are very young, the process of "looking" always tends to involve your hands.]
She advances on you menacingly, diving into her pocket for that slightly grimy cotton hanky that she forgot to replace last week.
Out comes the hanky - she shakes it and bits of fluff and pocket dust fall away.
Already nasty.
If the hanky looks too far-gone for her to dare putting it to her tongue, she says, "Lick this!", but you never seem to have enough dampness on your tongue to wet it sufficiently.
She gives up and licks the hanky herself to create a more moist patch and lunges at your face.
You wince, but it does no good.
A smear of her bright red lipstick has escaped onto the hanky where she licked it, so she scrubs even harder to get it off, not realising that the redness on your face is due to her over-zealous scrubbing.

"Oh, you'll do!" she announces, and you finally all leave the house.

Whatever your destination, you soon have to endure the second-phase-spit-wash horror.
It dries on your face in the fresh air, pulling the skin tight, so you rub it to turn the area back into flexible skin. If your hands are still dirty from the coal-treasure-hunting, you risk going through the whole process again, but as a child you don't think to look at your hands first.
For the rest of the outing, whenever the air is still, you catch a whiff of dried saliva and lipstick - which is disgusting, but there is no respite until your face is washed properly with water and a flannel.

I never had old dribbly aunts who kiss children and cause much the same kind of distress, but my sympathies go out to those that did. I imagine the suffering is the same for them as it was for us.
A pinched-up bit of crispy face and the stink of someone else's dried slobber.
I still shudder at the thought now.
I never committed a spit-wash on my own children. Although it was before the days of baby wipes I would always carry in my parenting equipment a supply of clean tissues and a small plastic bottle of clean water.
Is that so much to ask?

Needless to say I was horrified when I watched one of my daughters doing the Dirty Deed on one of their own children!
You KNOW who you are!
There's absolutely no excuse for it.

But I realise my mistake.
My own children never had to suffer the spit-wash themselves from me, so maybe they have no experience of how revolting it is to have it done to them.

Maybe it's an every-other-generation thing?

To PuzzledinCA; =)

Copied from EG24:
"Thanks, PuzzledinCA, it's heartening to know at least the television companies think people still care. And thank you for the walkthrough with clear explanantions for people who haven't perhaps followed the complete Minoto Ugly Duckling series. =D"

Thank you for taking the trouble to mention that. I never watch television, so it seems to me that everyone has fogotten.

I know disaster training probably figures higher in japanese education than, say england, where I live, but take for example policemen. All the training in the world never truly prepares one for the first dead body - sometimes a child.
I think the scale of the combined disasters in japan in such a short space of time [earthquakes, tsunami and power plant/s failure] must have been greater than even the trainers had experienced in living memory.
What I'm suggesting is that they can't possibly have been completely emotionally prepared for what happened, or the aftermath.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki [affecting smaller areas, possibly] would be the closest?

I'm not preoccupied with basking in the misery of others' misfortune, I just can't tolerate bullying, which the comments on Ugly Duckling 6 sort of amount to.
Kicking a man when he's down? It just seemed he could do with some back-up, so I got up on my soap box =D

Natural disasters fascinate me; my greatest dream is to go on a storm-chasing tour, and my favourite english experience was driving through a skinny tornado one summer night [yes, we DO get them]. My car window was open, and I only realised what it was when I got smacked in the head by very fast sand and a load of other stuff. =D
Apart from sand-blasting my face, I don't think anything or anyone was hurt by it.


The reason I spouted off on EG24 was because it seems so unfair to be firing so many complaints at Minoto's recent [FREE] games without seeming to consider that even if he hasn't lost everything, he probably knows someone who has.
Minoto is bound to be affected. His life will never be the same.