When I was a kid, spanking was still a normal practice that nobody thought twice about.  Sure, there were parents who felt it was an outdate and barbaric practice, but they were in the minority and looked at as crazy people.  By the time I reached high school, my generation saw spanking as unnecessary and cruel.  As time has passed, those "pro-spankers" have moved into the minority.  I should mention, for those who might not have figure it out, I'm an American.  I grew up in a relatively liberal part of the country, with a large conservative area around it.  Some consider me GenX, though I fall more in line with rarely mentioned GenY (or Xillennial if you must).  My micro generation has qualities of both GenX and Millennials, without having the numbers or benefits of either.  We're basically a "cusp" generation.

With that said, I raised by pro-spanking parents and grandparents, and I find the practice aberrant.  My father and at least one grandparent used spanking as a means of venting their anger on us though they would've laughed had you called that abuse.  They considered it their "right" to hit a child.  Some parents still see it that way.

The idea of teaching respect through fear is still foreign to me, which was the excuse for spanking in my family.  It didn't teach me or my siblings respect.  It taught me hate, bitterness and resentment, and I was broken by it, emotionally and mentally.  I stopped crying at 9-years-old and haven't been the same since.  Thankfully, therapy has worked wonders.

I mention this because of Bryan's punishment at the beginning of Chapter 5.  Diego, like myself, doesn't believe that spanking is ever necessary.  My mother, like Diego, only had to talk to us sternly, and we became more scared and compliant than any amount of physical abuse my father had ever hoped to get from spanking/beating us.  Also, throughout my life, I've noticed that amazing work ethic of Latin-X people, especially Mexicans.  Republicans can lie all they want about the "lazy Mexican," but we all know that Americans are really fucking lazy.  Drive by any good sized farm and count the workers.

Anyway, I figured that Diego, who was raised with a strong work ethic, would've done the same with Bryan and Caleb, instead of spanking them.  He raised his kids to fear angering him, because that was already scary enough.  The "physical" punishment is the hard labor.  I imagine that, during highly rebellious phases, when Bryan was struggling to adjust to life without Calvin, Bryan refused to do his chores, and Diego said something like, "Fine, but you're not eating till it's done."  With Bryan holding out, only to discover that Diego meant it.  Bryan's attitude would've only gone so far at that point.

For Diego, it's a matter of consequences (positive (rewards) or negative (punishments)).  Let's take the fight in class as an example.  Bryan's punishment (negative consequence) was doing house work; however, he was still allowed to have Kenny over.  Bryan's actions in class was uncalled for but for a moral reason.  Diego doesn't agree that violence is the answer, but he wasn't going to punish Bryan for taking a moral stance, especially against a bigot and bully; thus, issues more punishments wasn't necessary.  Grounding was the base punishment, and with Bryan's history, we was given an elevated punishment.

Diego is also the father I wanted to have and wish I could've been; however, due to the abuse my father put me through, I decided that children weren't ever going to be in future.  The last thing I wanted was to pass that on, even by accident.

Now, with the heaviness out of the way....

I wanted to add more comedic bits to the story at this point.  

If you've ever seen There's Something About Mary, you'll get the Bobby Laine joke better.  When Bryan is congratulating Diego on his anniversary dinner, I heard David Rose from Schitt's Creek in my head, including David's sarcastic facial expressions.  In fact, Bryan's entire reaction, with Diego and the sex talk, was inspired by Dan Levy's performance.  If you haven't seen that show, you really need to.

The scene with Chase the pizza guy was added to help add a tell towards Bryan's sexuality and show Caleb's perceptiveness.  Diego raised the boys in a home where someone's sexuality wasn't ever treated as a big deal, so there wouldn't have been any coming out or whatever.  I like to think that Caleb only mentioned it because Kenny was there.

The line "Oh, Sweetie, Bryan only has eyes for you," was paraphrased and lifted from Chasing Amy, which was probably the first queer centric movie I had ever seen and is pretty good.

The rest of the chapter was nice to write.  Bryan and Kenny were able to be more open and expressive with their feelings for each other in a safe environment.  A lot of writers, especially in movies and TV, seem to make a big deal out of such scenes.  Dan Levy, who wrote, produced and played David Rose, handled these sorts of scenes on Schitt's Creek in the best ways by keep them to a minimum and just giving the characters room to breathe, while not bashing the audience over the head, like they did on shows like Supergirl.  I think more shows need to follow Dan's lead and avoid the way Supergirl handled it, by creating over the top scenarios with heavy handed moral lessons what made the message more cringy than informative.

An example would be when Alex Danvers comes out as a lesbian.  They dragged it out and made a huge deal about it.  Yes, it was a big deal, but to me and others, it came off as too much and came close to being campy in a way, with the over the top existential crisis of the character, whose adopted sister is a fucking alien and superhero.  Yes, there are plenty of people who struggle with their sexuality and coming out, but I think storylines like this only fan those flames of anxiety and insecurity.

However, when David Rose came out as Pansexual it was talked about it a gentle absorbable way, since we're all lead to assume that David is gay, given how he presents himself.  The woman whom he had sex with was even confused by it all, which lead to the conversation about David being pan, and it was all discussed through wine preferences.  It wasn't cringy in the slightest (Dan himself hates cringy moments in real life), informative when explaining what pansexuality actually is, and then it's dropped once explained and accepted.  I think it gets brought up again later by David's dad Johnny (played by Dan's real life dad, Eugene Levy (the dad from the American Pie movies)), but it was more out of expressing his fears that David wasn't going to be accepted for who he is than any conflict about who David was.

With Caleb having been raised almost exclusively by an openly gay man, I felt it was only appropriate for him to not be bothered by his brother being in a relationship with Kenny, but as a sibling, the teasing was a bit called for.

A concern that came up in the comments to this chapter that I kind of addressed was Bryan's conflicts with his feeling towards Kenny and not wanting to lead him on.  I touched on it then, so let's see if I can expand on it....

Bryan has started puberty.  We might as well get that out in the open.  The introduction to those chemicals changes people physically and emotionally; however, it doesn't necessarily do the same as far their maturity.  Though Bryan isn't technically a little kid, he isn't an adult either.  It's in that his conflict is housed.  He's caught between being a child and adult.  He knows how he feels in both.  His hormones and love for Kenny tell him yes, but his child-like naivete tells him no.  Then you add his abandonment/attachment issues from Calvin, and you have Bryan's conflict with Kenny.  It seems contradictory, because he's in a situation where he's having contradicting feelings.  His lizard brain is trigging his fight/flight response, so he doesn't get hurt, while his emotional brain wants the attachment, which is being fueled by his new hormone imbalance.

Despite how small the chapter was, there was a lot to it.  I was going to add Chapter 6 to this, thinking there wasn't much to it, but I guess I proved myself.

See you in the next one....

John.