Dear Diana,
The Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is out to get Anselm. He's so CRUEL to Hazel that we had to give him a mark. I'm getting all the Schoolhouse Rock songs stuck in my head. Well, we have it on now. Gotta go!
The "mark" system was something that I made up, and I'm pretty proud of it, actually. So, since Dad yelled a lot and spanked us occasionally, but never did anything substantial to regulate our behavior, I decided that I would fix things. Accordingly, I put up a weekly chart for each of us (I think only the kids, but I can't remember), and every time someone did something maladaptive, the rest of us would decide whether or not that person would get a mark on the chart. The system of checks and balances had to be built in, otherwise one person would seize unilateral control, and I obviously didn't want that. If a person built up a certain number of marks during the week, they would forfeit certain things, or would have to do other things to compensate. It sounds silly, but it worked really well, and kept us all in check (me included) for a long time.
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