Free Saturday's Child by Robin Morgan

Barry (pre-nose job) was the moderator. That show, for its first year on radio, for its second on both radio and television, was the competitor of The Quiz Kids , and was staged before a live audience. Like that of other Barry Ehrenreich Productions (and Barry Enright Productions to come), its spontaneity was an illusion; the questions and answers were fixed beforehand.
    We were a group of children ranging in age from four (I was the youngest) through eight or nine (Dickie Orlan, overplump and always hungry, Charlie Hankenson, who squeaked rather sweetly) to age fourteen (Peggy Bruder, a ladylike almost-adult with long blond corkscrew curls I coveted). We sat on studio folding chairs—my feet unable to reach the floor—behind a long counter equipped with table mikes and glasses of water. Our job was to “counsel” other children, who wrote us letters asking for advice on such matters as “My best friend’s family is moving away; can we still be friends long-distance?” Some of the questions were drawn from actual letters sent in by real children, but most were devised by Barry, Ehrenreich, and their team of hack writers.
    We were assembled before showtime, told what questions Mr. Barry would read on the show, and assigned our answers. Ehrenreich was shrewd enough to permit us to phrase our replies in our own words for a more natural effect, but it was clear that no one should even think about diverging from the substance of an assigned answer. And no one did. Ehrenreich, who always patrolled the stage behind us while we were on air, had a habit of grasping an errant child—someone who rambled on too long or talked over audience laughter—sharply by the shoulder. He had developed a singularly effective method of communicating his displeasure by digging his fingers in between the shoulder and collarbone, while his thumb gouged at the shoulder blade—a sort of Vulcan neck pinch long before Mr. Spock.
    I was perhaps all of five years old when I turned insubordinate. One of the questions, we’d been told, was from a child complaining that when he was naughty, his mother reported it to his father, who then spanked himtoo hard; what did the Juvenile Jurors think the child should do? We had been duly assigned our replies. One Juror had been told to advise the letter writer, “Just don’t be naughty anymore” (certain to evoke a laugh from the studio audience); another was told to counsel him to beg his mother to do the spanking instead, on the assumption she would wield a more compassionate hand; still another answer was that he should ask if his mother and father could take turns doing the spanking. My assigned reply was that he should beg his father very nicely please maybe not to spank so hard (sure to get another laugh) or else to sneak some padding under his pants ( big laugh). Not one of the assigned answers challenged the concept of corporal punishment.
    But once we were live on air and my turn came, I said something different.
    I don’t know why. I can’t remember the thought processes or emotional valences that kindled this act, although I do remember the fear and what I now know was the adrenaline surge that overrode the fear. I leaned forward toward my table mike and said it out loud.
    â€œI don’t think you should be spanked at all.”
    Instantly, I felt the Ehrenreich vise on my right shoulder.
    I went on. “I don’t think it’s good that children get hit.”
    He clamped down harder. I could feel his fingernails through my starched organdy dress.
    But I went on—about how maybe if the letter writer asked his parents to make up some other punishments for him when he was naughty, they might.
    Ehrenreich reached in front of me and turned my mike around, facing it away from me.
    On I recklessly went, giddy with it now, suggesting alternate punishments—“… like losing a privilege, maybe, or being sent to your room without