When I was in third grade, my family started attending a semi-fundamentalist protestant church. At this point I was eight or nine and I had a four-year-old brother and sisters aged three and two.
I guess my mother was maybe feeling overwhelmed or something, because she was somehow convinced by this church that she needed to start spanking us kids, and taking the old saying literally, decided she needed a ‘rod’.
For this purpose, she drafted a wooden kitchen spoon. When she made this particular announcement, I was a bit sceptical of the whole proposition. I remember that while talking to a relative on the phone, I said something along the lines of: “Well, mom’s hitting the kids with a spoon now” – to which she replied that I was included in the new regime.
Well, it was inevitable, I suppose, that she’d eventually find cause to spank me and that’s where this story picks up steam. The church had this little fenced-in area for kids to play in before and after services and one Sunday I was watching my brother while my mom took my sisters to the car. The plan was that she would bring the car around for us once she got the babies into their car seats so that my brother wouldn’t go nuts while she seated them.
This wasn’t a bad plan but my little brother didn’t react well. He wasn’t very happy that mom had gone and was getting upset. So I pointed across the street to her on the parking lot to calm him down. Well, this didn’t work at all, and he went nuts, started screaming and crying.
When mom got back, she asked why he was freaking out. Two girls who had been in the little fence with us told mom that I had shown him that she was leaving, omitting the fact that my brother was already freaked out when I pointed her out. Mom got mad about this. She got us into the car and told me that I was going to get the spoon when we got home.
I don’t remember if I tried to explain what had happened and she didn’t listen, or if I just got indignant and figured I’d take it and to hell with her, but the sentence was final. I think this might have had at least something to do with my comments earlier on the phone, as if she wanted to establish authority or something.
But the spanking was going to be when we got home, which was at least a half-hour’s drive away. And we were also going to go to lunch with another family from the church. So I would have a long time to anticipate my impending fate.
As we approached the restaurant, I asked that we please not discuss the spanking with the other family, and Mom agreed. Some relief. But when we arrived, the other family wasn’t there anyway. So Mom put it to me whether I would rather we go on into the restaurant and eat ourselves, or just go straight home and get my spanking over with. I chose the latter, and we went on home.
When we got home, she fed us and then took the wooden spoon from a drawer in the kitchen and took me to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, took down my pants and underwear, put me over her knee, and began to spank my bare behind with the spoon.
I don’t remember much, though I’ve been spanked with a spoon as an adult, so I know it hurt. I figure I probably tried to remained stoic; I was a stoic sort of a kid. I don’t remember how many swats I took but I’m sure my butt was very red and I was crying by the time it was over.
I retreated to my bedroom following the spanking, to mull the whole thing over.
Contributor: Anonymous