I grew up at a time, and on a street, where corporal discipline was a given. Spanking was the accepted means of correction from toddlerhood to mid-teens.
The attached ‘rowhouses’ were close together and in the summer, windows were wide open – air-conditioning was common enough in public theatres and malls, but not in homes in our neighbourhood! It seemed as though every kid received a spanking or two a week and, although we literally could hear (and occasionally see) those educational experiences, we never talked about them among ourselves.
It was too embarrassing to discuss, even though each of us had days when we sat gingerly, if at all. The very worst thing probably was the humiliation of being spanked in front of, or within earshot of, the friends we were out playing with moments before! There were variations on this and I will mention just a few.
One night, a friend’s father came home from work to a litany of misdeeds recited by his wife (my mother never delayed a spanking, since she was stricter and spanked harder than my easy-going and forgiving dad).
Tony’s dad came right down the block, belt folded in hand, and marched my friend right up the street, administering stinging smacks on his behind the whole way. As soon as they’d entered the front door, anguished yowls told us that Tony’s pants and underwear had come down and the strap was being applied to a rapidly-reddening bare bottom.
Linda’s mother called her in from a yelling match in the front yard, where she overheard her 11 year-old daughter using language to make a sailor blush. That language was replaced by whimpering and begging (all to no avail) as quickly as Linda’s angry mother grabbed her potty-mouthed daughter by the arm and began applying the flat wooden spoon to Linda’s bare buttocks.
I was ashamed to stand and listen to Linda’s wails and the resounding smacks – but I did, my own bottom quivering sympathetically (and not without some guilty dampness in my own cotton panties). This was not the first time I’d had an erotic response to a spanking, but it was the first time someone else’s paddling had turned me on!
When I’d earned a real spanking (as opposed to a quick series of smacks to my behind in response to ‘talking back’), it was usually in the kitchen, or in my room, invariably over my mother’s knee and usually hard, brief and well-deserved. But on one painfully memorable occasion, I did get paddled in public.
The experience was so embarrassing, it was the worst spanking I ever got – although arguably not the hardest nor the longest. While my mom was shopping in the local Ben Franklin, I’d become entranced with a plastic miniature animal that my mom decided I didn’t need. I wanted it – and snuck it into my pocket.
We’d checked out and were on the way to the car when the toy fell out of my pocket. Red-faced and scared, I lied about taking it. That was the last straw – a double-header of taking something and lying about it.
My mother didn’t say a word. She dragged me to the car, opened the back door and sat on the bench seat, her feet firmly on the parking lot and me awkwardly (and disbelievingly) yanked over her lap. She jerked up my short summer skirt, yanked down my panties without hesitation, and spanked the living daylights out of my bare bottom for at least three minutes.
It would probably have been reported as abusive these days but I suspect people were both amused and approving at that time, when good childcare meant good correction.
By the time I was allowed to stand up and pull up my panties, my flaming cheeks were thoroughly corrected but the humiliation wasn’t over. I was marched back into the variety store, made to hand over the pilfered animal to the check-out worker, and apologise.
I know my face was as red as my severely spanked bottom, on which I squirmed wretchedly all the way home. Nothing more was said – I’d paid dearly for that mistake and although I made many others, I never did anything again that would earn me a public paddling!
Contributor: Sandi