The Badest One Squawks First

Growing up the youngest of seven kids, I quickly realized why my mother ,“The Penguin,” ruled with an iron fist. She had seven Hodges children to put up with day in and day out… At the time, with me being the youngest of the bunch, it seemed her feathers were almost ruffled daily…

Going into town was always an adventure… We would all load up in our old beat-up station wagon; bounce down the long dirt road to the highway; then make our way into town… There’s an old saying in The South, “The Badest One Squawks First…” This saying was never more true than when The Penguin was enforcing the laws of the land she governed… At some point when we were approaching town, my mother would slowly turn down her Gospel Music playing scratchily through the AM Radio, and make her announcement. Gazing into the rearview, her eyes narrowed as if to pinpoint certain kids when she spoke. She said, “Alright, we’re goin’ to the grocery store, you can act out if you wanta, I’m not goin’ to spank you, I’m not goin’ to get on to you, but when we get home, you’re mine…” Then she would turn her Gospel back up and away we rolled into town.

Once at the store, there was always a few of us kids that would start testin’ the water… pushing the buttons of the Penguin’s patience by, as she would put it, not acting right… Looking back, I think we kids were just so excited to be in a building with AC and surrounded by all that food our brain kinda went into overload… Intoxicated by all the wonders of the big city of Gainesville… Being the youngest, it was kinda easy to see who was goin’ to squawk first out of all the Penguin’s Chicks… Her eyes would cut to the side and narrow into little slits, barely showing any whites; her face pulled into a tight frown of disapproval as she would say the two words and a sound that would assure someone was going to squawk that day, “Darn it All!” which was almost always followed by the sound comin’ from clinched lips and flared nostrils, “Hmmm!!!”
Then she would slowly unruffle her feathers and continue shopping, acting as if nothing had occurred… But we all knew which one of us had been showin’ out on isle 3... We knew good and well they had been marked for a squawkin’ in The Penguin’s mental rolodex of her elephant like brain… She remembers everything, especially if it made her mad… It didn’t matter if thirty years had passed, she can tell you what happened on the Stories (Soap opera), the day you acted out in public… And if she told you to be quiet during an avalanche or tornado, you better do it… There could be cows floating by in the wind, houses falling on witches with sparkly red slippers, and The Penguin would still know you made some kind of noise…

Anyways, on the drive back home, all was normal talk and play between the kids in the car, almost like nothing had happened… Then perfectly on cue, some strange sort of quiet would fall upon us kids as we drew closer to home… We all knew what was comin’… The kids that were fixin’ to squawk, their eyes filled with fear and they turned a strange sort of gray… The kids that were fixin’ to witness the squawkin’ were on the edge of their seat, waiting with a slight smirk of, “Yep, you goin’ to get now…” dressing their little faces…

It was then that The Penguin slowed the car and pulled onto the dirt road leading to our driveway… This is when the silence was broken by my brothers or sisters that had acted out in the store… Their tears, quivering lips, and pleading fell on deaf ears… For the Penguin had spoken and now it was time to deliver… The squawkin’ had begun...