Shame On You

Do parents still shame their children? "Shame on you!" "You should be ashamed of yourself!" "I am so ashamed of you!" "Shame, shame!"
I'm certain I must have shamed my three kids, because that was the way I was raised. But I don't think I shamed them quite as much as I was. At least I hope not. To this day I cannot leave food on my plate no matter how full I am....."Shame on you, don't you know there are children starving in...." "I'm so ashamed of you calling Miss Friman 'Maudie'." "Shame on you for tracking mud in on my clean floor!"
I definitely grew up knowing what shame was. One of the incidents I was most ashamed of wasn't something I did, but something I was accidently a part of.
Some extra-curricular activities took place after school, but junior play practice was held after supper. One of the neighbor girls, a senior, was going to town for something else and she offered to take me and bring me home.
She and one of her friends, another senior, wanted to ride around for awhile before going home. Hey, that was ok by me; scooping the loop was the thing to do. After awhile, Nan said: "Betty Brink is baby sitting for Springs tonight. Let's go out and scare her." Dolores agreed. And I had to go along (wanting to be 'cool').
The house was a little way out of town, beyond where there were street lights. We parked across the highway behind a feed store, then crept up to the house. They began by scratching at the windows, then knocking on the door, then running around to the back side of the house to do the same there. We could hear Betty saying "Who's there?" After a while we could tell she was crying. Dolores and Nan were laughing like crazy - until the town cop showed up. Busted.
He read us the riot act. Nan stuck up for us saying we were just having some fun. Betty opened the door and saw who it was and was a good sport about it, laughing about how scared she had been.
Town marshall Reed warned us not to do anything like that again and let us go. He probably even said, "shame on you", but I didn't need to hear that. I was so ashamed of myself for even being there. Instead of feeling like one of the gang, of being accepted by the senior girls, I felt even further apart. In fact, I no longer cared about being popular if it meant acting like them.
I don't think I ever told my parents about what we had done that night. It has always remained one of the things I have been most ashamed of. (And yes, Dolores was one of those neighbor girls Dad was always asking me why I couldn't be more like.)