Short Story

Suspended Animation

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

This is The Unicorn Challenge where we are
encouraged to write a story in 250 words or
less using the photo below as inspiration.
I used a story of mine from 2019 which I
remembered the minute I saw the image.

© Ayr/Gray

“Manga il cibo sul tuo piatto, Concetta, o lo mangerai dal pavimento.
(“Eat the food on your plate, Concetta, or you will eat it off the floor.”) 

The room fell silent. Without changing her expression or taking her huge brown eyes off her father Domenico’s face, three-year-old Concetta picked up a meatball, extended her chubby toddler arm over the side of her highchair, deliberately released the meatball and let it drop to the floor.

Everyone sat in suspended animation as Domenico calmly put down his knife and fork and removed the napkin which was tucked into the neck of his starched white shirt. Slowly he rose, stood behind Concetta’s highchair and grabbed hold of the back of her dress. He lifted her out of her chair and, holding her feet with his other hand, lowered her to the floor. Concetta’s mouth grazed the meatball and she turned her face away, but Domenico pressed her face into the food, prodding her to take it into her mouth. Satisfied, he sat her back in her chair, returned to his seat and resumed eating. Unfazed, Concetta lazily chewed the meatball.

Reluctantly, the rest of the family continued eating except Concetta’s mother, Rosa, who sat watching her daughter. At the end of the meal as the women cleared the table, Rosa placed a napkin over Concetta’s mouth so she could spit out the chewed up meatball.

“Mai più, Concetta! Fai come ti viene detto!” Rosa said.
(“Never again, Concetta! Do as you are told!”)

 
NAR©2025
250 Words

This is a Sicilian folksong called “Mi votu e mi rivotu” (“I toss and I turn”)

The Unicorn Challenge-06/06/25

All text, graphics and videos are copyright for Nancy’s Notes 🖊️🎶, The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk, The Rhythm Section, et al., and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.

36 thoughts on “Suspended Animation”

  2. Ha, WordPress just swallowed my comment – I hope it hasn’t been posted 42 times somewhere else, Nancy!
    Different times, different customs – and we can’t go back and judge these earlier times by our current standards.
    Thank goodness Mother was there to help – but at the same time emphasise the lesson.
    When I was wee, the punishment in school was to be hit across the hand with a leather belt by the teacher.
    A shocked young psycholgist once asked me, years later and with huge concern, what it had felt like to be hit by a ‘big person’.
    ‘Normal,’ was my answer.
    Am I glad the pracrice has been banned – of course, but it was just what happened at the time.

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    1. Exactly my point, Jenne.
      The moment I read about your classroom punishment, I remembered my 1st Grade classroom. The room was quite unique in that it was at the bottom of a staircase of approximately 8 steps. Whenever it was punishment time, our teacher would walk the misbehaving student up the steps to the top platform. The child would extend an arm over the railing above the class and the teacher would administer 10 whacks across the knuckles/hand/wrist/arm with a wooden ruler. It was painful, physically and psychologically. But that was not the end. When the parents were informed of the child’s punishment at school, they were punished again at home. After all, the teacher was the voice of authority and never wrong so certainly, the child must have done something terrible!
      I was a defiant smart ass (much like little Concetta) and nothing bothered me too much; I never saw a psychologist and I wasn’t scarred for life but I grew up knowing that physical action such as that was sometimes necessary.
      It is an interesting debate; I believe the child who is punished and/or reprimanded appropriately for disobeying usually does not grow up into a criminal as opposed to the child who gets a ‘time out‘ often grows up with little regard or respect for most people in authority.
      Thanks for adding to the exchange of thoughts with an excellent comment, Jenne.

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      1. Interesting what you say about there sometimes being a need for a physical deterrent.
        I was a teacher for a brief 2 years in the 1970s – I didn’t enjoy it. I had been a bit of a wanderer and had got a professional qualification to appease my father who worried about my future. (My mother was dead by then.)
        So, giving the children ‘the belt’ for serious misdemeanours was still the practice. Along with our school posting, new teachers were all given agovernment issue strap or belt.
        I was determined not to use it, but I was a new teacher trying to establish my place in the school. The 12-year-old boys didn’t understand – they saw a new young female teacher = fresh meat! In order to survive, I had to do what was expected. I didn’t like doing it, I wasn’t good at it – poor hand-eye coordination – but it was a question of survival. And happily, I only had to use it very rarely.
        Now I seldom mention this because folk – even of my own age group – look at me as if I was a monster. ‘How could you?!’ Quite simple, it was them or me.
        Of course things have changed and happily so, because there were some really sadistic teachers out there.
        The funny thing is that when I look back, the real scarring on me didn’t come from physical punishement, either at home – a spanking was reserved for seriously bad offences – or in school. It came from words parents/teachers used. The pain stopped, the words stayed.
        I’m not saying we should go back to physical punishment, not at all. But I think there needs to be some kind of cooperation between school, home and child. If I went home and said I’d been punished, as you said above, I was punished again. That’s very often not the case these days where some parents are apparently unable to believe that their child can misbehave.
        It’s a conundrum, but one that we need to address in an open manner, I think, and as a society as a whole because there’s a massive breakdown of discipline and respect in schools. I have friends who were very good teachers, but who have left the profession because of the stress element in the classroom.
        Here endeth the rant! 😉But I’m glad to have had the chance to put this out there.

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        1. Thank you, Jenne, for sharing all this with us. If anything, I am pleased to know my story has become a springboard for discussion. Most people reading the story of my grandfather and mother would likely think “how appalling”; I’m pleased to see that is not the case and people do see the need for discipline. The reason I did not say from the beginning that this was a true story was because I knew that knowledge would color people’s comments.
          Take heart in the fact that you did not enjoy taking the belt to the kids in your class; anyone who enjoys beating other people, especially children, as a form of discipline is not all right in the head.

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    1. It’s a classic case of ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’. We’re not talking about daily beatings out back behind the shed with a whip. This is teaching your child obedience, respect and the difference between right and wrong. Leave children to run amok and they will usually grow up with little respect for other people or things.

      Excellent comment, Jodi. Thanks very much.

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  4. I can remember as a little child, being put on a highchair, not for eating, it was just a giant chair to me, a bentwood chair I think it was called, no armrests, so I had to balance, and this was the punishment chair. It brought it all back reading this Nancy., …. I think I’m in need of therapy., ..😂….a Great story of motherhood, ….strewth, parenthood and childhood., a minefield to cross, … how did any of us grow up?…💫😉💫

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    1. Our parents were not monsters although at the time we thought they were! I was a tough little kid and didn’t let too much bother me; I’m pretty much the same way now. But I knew when I did something wrong, blatantly disobeyed my parents. I was punished … usually grounded and had something important to me taken away for a couple of weeks. I was punished fairly often and in the end I learned some valuable lessons. And guess what …. I survived! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Penn.

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  5. Good post Nancy. Discipline is important to set limits. Sometimes parents are afraid to discipline their kids. Like you, if I misbehaved, I had privileges revoked. I wasn’t a goody two shoes, but knew when I’d pushed the line.

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    1. Exactly, Di! All my mother had to do was give me a look and I knew I was in big trouble. I learned at an early age how to toe the line and I don’t feel like I was mistreated in any way. I brought my own kids up the same way and they turned out just fine.

      Thanks for a great comment.

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      1. I once sat well into the afternoon lessons in front of a plate of (to me) disgusting carrots that I refused to eat. My mother was a wise woman who knew me well. She sent a note to school asking for me to be excused carrots meantime. She knew perfectly well that I’d soon be wanting carrots again! To this day I cringe when I see soggy carrots in sauce.

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  7. Seems to be what I remember, and what I had to do when I was a kid. So, it’s an age thing I’m thinking – 1960s for me!

    I also really enjoyed that song and what was happening there.

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    1. Thank you, Chris, for not jumping to judgement. Child-rearing is so different now and not necessarily for the better. I was never hit as a child but I was definitely punished and it wasn’t a measly little time out. Punishment …. usually being grounded or certain privileges taken away …. was a real bummer but it got the point across. I grew up knowing how to treat people respectfully and being responsible for everything I did.

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  8. I read your comment to C.E. and felt better. I understand completely. I’ve heard many stories about how my grandfather raised my dad with a strict hand, and I adored my grandfather. It was a different time, wasn’t it. Wonderful storytelling, Nance.

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    1. Thank you, Brenda. What I said to CE is the absolute truth. I was not around in 1920 but I was there in my childhood home through the 50s and 60s when my grandparents lived above us in our two family house. Never once did I feel anything but patience, kindness and love from grandfather. It was indeed a different time for a Sicilian immigrant with a small daughter and a sickly wife. Things are not always as they seem.

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    1. I totally get where you’re coming from.
      This is a true account told to me by my mother, Concetta. Domenico is my grandfather. Contrary to what you may think, this is not a story about bullying, abuse or intolerance. This is a tale of another generation, another culture and, while it reads as extreme, I grew up with my grandfather and I can readily say that I adored him, as did my sister, mother and father. I knew him only as a hard-working, soft-spoken, gentle and kind-hearted man. Do I condone this type of child-rearing? No. However …. 105 years ago, this is how things were done in my grandparent’s Sicilian home.

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