Toya, my heart goes out to you for the experiences you had in life. Yeah, you turned out remarkable because of your resilient spirit.

You know, I remember how my cousins use to sit around and make jokes about getting whippings or as some down south say, whoopins. We would laugh. They would laugh. But as I got older, I think about someone being beat with a belt while getting out of a bathtub naked isn't funny. Some of my uncles have said our generation aren't hard enough on their children because many of my cousins don't "whip" their children. That's one thing I'm glad we didn't pass down.