re: Creative threats your parents came up with

My dad didn't have to do anything but verbally correct me once. But I believe my mother had some kind of special training that was passed from one generation to the next in the art of switching butt. She would usually finish the thrashing by stating that if it didn't work, she would send me to "reform school". When I once ask what that was, she said, "prison for children that need to learn how to behave".

"...and I will instruct them to list every bad thing you do on your permanent record, using indelible ink!". That's how I learned what "indelible" meant.