My brother read a copy of this and offered some helpful insight.

People back then, and people now, meant two different things when they said "respect." In my childhood, when an adult said, "You'd better respect me," what the adult meant was, "You'd better obey me." Not the same thing at all. Respect is a mental action. Obedience is a physical action. Those adults would see the obedience, and call it respect, when on the inside the child may have been feeling anything but respect. I know that in my case, pretty darn near all of the time, what I was feeling was not respect but fear, dread, and occasionally hatred. I didn't behave because I was a "good kid." I behaved because I was terrified of that belt, switch, hairbrush, or whatever was going to be used on me if I didn't.

You know, sometimes on Facebook I come across one of those "repost if you agree" status updates that talks about, "Our generation was raised this way and that way, and we turned out OK." I never repost those things. I most certainly did not "turn out OK." I've had to work hard to even approach being normal.

My husband tells me nobody says "ma'am" or "sir" nowadays, and nobody is called Mr. or Mrs. Those words has gone out of the language the same as "groovy" and "daddy-o." And that's exactly what I'm talking about when I say life Calvined me by changing the rules. Just when I came of age and qualified to be "ma'am" and "Mrs.," society decreed, "You know what? That's passé. Let's stop doing that." It makes me think of many a game during my childhood, in which the other children all simultaneously decided their mothers were calling them, the very minute it was my turn to be "it."