REWARD OR PUNISHMENT?

OK, people, strain a little bit and decide whether or not tying a string around your finger was a reward or a punishment.  If you think that is a tough one to answer, here's an easy one.  Was sewing lace on your shirt-tail a punishment or a reward?  Now that is really easy.  Just like this one:  Kneeling in the corner for 15 minutes.  Reward or punishment?  Being made to go to bed without supper was a favorite punishment in our house.  That was a double whammy because you had to do your homework first while everyone else was eating and then, you went to bed.  Pedaling your bike for a six mile round trip to go to the bakery to get day-old bread for $0.10 per loaf instead of $0.20.  Go out on a rainy night to pick night crawlers to replenish your stock.  Reward or punishment?  
I was thinking about this today because I wonder what the children of today get for punishment at home.  I was thinking that maybe they have to sit there and listen to a parent rant and rave about the displacement of their ideological focus thereby causing the emotional temblor that produces concentric waves of negative Karma which inhibit the positive energy of the enervated kundalini serpent from activating the key chakras thereby exacerbating the inability of the dialectic forces to create a calm and peaceful shalom.  Child sits there texting his buddy, "Kin u b lev it?  Where does she get this ---?"
"'l 8 t c ya 2 morra"
So, that's it.  Times do change, a little bit.  I often wonder what the 21st century equivalent of being forbidden to listen the "Lone Ranger" for one solid week is?  Or, what would wring a kid completely dry as effectively as being told "no, you can't have a Dick Tracy 'look behind you furtively' 2 carat gold ring."  How many of you remember that?  Hmm, just what I figured.  Actually, my brother and I both won on that one.  Now that was a REWARD.  Until we got it and found out that it worked well on radio but not at all on the streets.  So, did we win?  Hardly.
I bring this to a close with the real punishment.  Nowadays when you can see people actually cutting tomatoes while that are glowing with praises for the knife that you "see" them using to do the cutting, you say to yourself, "Wow I need me one a dem!"  So you buy one for $19.95 and get three others as a "gift."  Friends and countrymen [& women], boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen and everybody else.  If the merchandise were that good, would they "give" you three more free of charge?  When I see people buy what they "see" on TV,  I am consoled that I didn't get to "see" the ring before I got it.  Plus, plus, get this, with 65 years worth of inflation, isn't it just possible that your knife is really worth about the same as my worthless ring?  Heee...