My pops, while he had the capacity to beat me like a slave, didn't do it too often, in retrospect. He only came in with the beats when I had really gotten out of line. He did more talking to me than anything. If I screwed up in school, he would sit me down at the kitchen table and talk to me about the importance, as a young black kid, of getting my education and doing right, how I already had two strikes against me... We would be sitting there for what seemed like eternity, but he was lacing me with game that would stick with me for life. Even now, with my sons, I do more talking than beating. My wife handles the misdemeanor beatings, I come in when a felony is committed.
My pops would play mind games with a nikka, though. I remember distinctly this one time, a 12 year old nikka had a little money in his pocket, and I had bought myself this container of Haagen Dazs chocolate ice cream. So I went to the kitchen, and took it out the freezer. You know when you lift up something expecting it to be full, but it's actually empty? That's what it was like when I took out that ice cream. Now, in the projects, we had these little kitchens, and pops would be sitting at the table looking at the TV/reading the paper, and the fridge was right behind him. So I stood there looking in the cup like

... The cup had like maybe two spoonfuls left in there. I knew my pops had to have eaten it, my moms didn't eat ice cream. Without even turning to look at me from the TV, pops was like "You got the freezer open?" "Yeah..." "Oh yeah, I ate some of your ice cream

..." I'm like

, and I'm thinking to myself, "some?!? this nikka ate the whole thing!" Like he was reading my mind, he was like "I left you some in there, though"

... Course, I couldn't come sideways at my pops, so I had to be easy... I stood there looking in the cup like

and my pops tells me "you gonna eat it now?"

So I'm like

"nah, I'm good".... Then my pops was like "if you aint gonna eat it, I'll eat the rest

" Again I'm like

I'm thinking I'd have been better off if he'd just ate the whole thing. The whole time, the nikka did not turn around once to address me, just kept watching TV/looking at the paper... So I just put it back and took my L and kept pushing... Funny thing was, it wasn't till many years later, when I had this isolated incident come up in my mind, that I got what he was doing. I was sitting at my kitchen table laughing thinking about how just now I was peeping game on what he did to me.