I was very interested to read your story Aunty Pat’s smackings, as I was subject to a very similar arrangement when I was a boy. There was one big difference, though – my spanker came to me!
My mum had been a keen equestrian, but when I was just six years old she was thrown from her horse (spooked by a passing car) and left in a wheelchair, paralysed from the waist down. Unlike the person in the other story, I was lucky enough to still have my dad around, and for a while my parents got by with me being sent my room to ‘wait till your father gets home’.
When he did so, Dad would come upstairs, put me over his knee and smack me over the seat of my trousers. To be honest, he was pretty soft with me and it didn’t do me a lot of good.
One day, I was out playing in the garden. Mum was there too and talking over the fence to our left-hand neighbour, who I called Auntie Deirdre (the writer of the other story has already pointed up this rather peculiarly British tradition). She was in her 50s and had two grown-up children.
Mum must have been moaning about my lack of discipline when I heard Auntie Deirdre say: “Geoff needs to take his pants down for it.” You can imagine that I cocked my ears up at that remark.
Mum then said something to the effect that my dad didn’t really like smacking my bottom much. Auntie Deirdre replied: “Well, if you want him properly smacked, I’m happy to come round and do him anytime you like. It kept my two on the straight and narrow, that’s for sure.”
By now really embarrassed, I went a bit further up the garden so I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation, but then my mother shouted at me: “Simon! Come here!”
I reluctantly and slowly went back towards the two women. Auntie Deirdre looked at me appraisingly, almost as if she was already sizing up my bottom. Then Mum said: “Auntie Deirdre and I have been talking. You have been getting a really naughty boy just lately, and I won’t have it. So when you misbehave in future, she and I have agreed that she will come round and smack your bottom. Do you understand?”
I blushed deeply at the mention of something so embarrassing as corporal punishment but managed a nod. “Have you been a good boy for your mum today, Simon?” Auntie Deirdre demanded. Fortunately, Mum answered for me. “Yes, he got a bit of a smacked bum off his dad last night so he’s behaving himself for now.” “Boys his age need father to take a belt to their bare bottoms,” Auntie Deirdre shot back. “Well, see you behave yourself from now on, Simon – you won’t like my medicine, believe me!”
For a few weeks, I was the best behaved boy in town. Just the threat of Auntie Dierdre coming round to smack me appalled me. The thought of having my bottom smacked by a woman who wasn’t my mum was mortifying. I thought about it a lot. Would Auntie Deirdre use the belt she said my dad should employ? Most worrying of all was her remark about bare bottoms – would she take my pants down if called upon to smack me?
As I say, I was a good boy for a long time, but such is the nature of small boys that they can’t be good for too long. I forget exactly what I had done naughty, but one afternoon, soon after I got home from school, Mum exploded on me and said: “Right – I’m ringing Auntie Deirdre!” I begged her not to but she was having none of it. She scooted her wheelchair over to the telephone and made the call. It was a relatively short one.
“Right, young man, sit on the sofa – while you still can – and we’ll wait for Auntie Deirdre to come.” I sat there, misery personified. I remember listening to the lounge clock ticking for what seemed like hours but of course it was only a few minutes.
Before too long, we heard the back door open (this was in the days when doors were rarely locked, except at night) and Auntie Deirdre calling out. “We’re in the lounge!” Mum shouted back. Our neighbour came through the door. In her right hand was a wooden hairbrush. She sat down on the sofa next to me.
“Well, Simon, what have you been up to?” she asked. Before I could open my mouth, it became clear that this was a question not really aimed at me, as Mum described my misbehaviour, adding to the list one or two little sins I thought had been ignored or forgotten.
“Well,” Auntie Deirdre, now looking me right in the eye. “It sounds to me like somebody needs his bottom smacked.” My mouth opened in protest but no words would come. “Yes, he does,” Mum confirmed behind me to my horror.
The room was a combined lounge-diner. Auntie Deirdre got up, took a chair from under the dining table and placed it in the centre of the room, facing Mum’s wheelchair. Auntie Deirdre sat down on it, put the hairbrush down on her lap and called me to her side – which I did very reluctantly.
I had no sooner got there than her hands went to the waistband of my grey school shorts. Before I really knew what was happening, she had unzipped and unbuttoned me and lowered the shorts to my knees. I was still looking down at this state of affairs, appalled, when her hands went quickly back up and eased down my underpants to the same level.
“Yes – bare bottom!” Auntie Deirdre said, looking me straight in the eye again. “This is what naughty boys need, isn’t it?” That was another one which didn’t need an answer from me. She picked up the hairbrush. “Lie over my knee!”
I did as I was told, being familiar with the position from my dad’s spankings. Auntie Deirdre pulled my shirt back a bit to expose my bottom properly, and put an arm round my now bare waist. It was a grip of iron, and I was about to discover why it was necessary.
The hairbrushing that followed was the worst smacking I had ever had in my young life. Mum’s own hand smackings had been quite sharp and definitely to be avoided, especially compared with Dad’s fairly innocuous spankings, but this was in a different league.
Auntie Deirdre set my bottom on fire and the more I cried, the more smacks I seemed to get. She aimed most of the strokes hard and low, I guess so that I would really feel the chastisement for a while when I sat down – which I certainly did.
I was finally let up, a blubbering wreck. Auntie Deirdre took me by the hand and steered me over to an empty corner of the room. I was ordered to put my hands on my head and was left there, crying and newly smacked bare bottom on show.
When Dad got home, Mum delighted in regaling him with all the intimate details of my punishment. “Do you want me to smack him again?” Dad asked. To my relief, Mum replied. “No, I think he’s suffered enough for today. Simon – show your dad your smacked bottom!”
So to my intense embarrassment, I had to pull down my pants and show off my (very red and sore) bottom again – but it was better than a ‘top up’ over Dad’s knee right then.
To say that the results on my behaviour was spectacular would be an understatement. Even Dad stopped smacking me when he saw how much better the results were when I was turned over Auntie Deirdre’s knee. She continued to put me over it until I was around 13.
Our surname is Royal and it was Auntie Deirdre’s little joke that she was ‘bottom smacker by Royal appointment’. It was a gag she wheeled out at parties and get-togethers (causing much reddening in my upper set of cheeks, needless to say) even when I was a young man.
Contributor: Simon