When I was a small boy, parental culture was such that for many children, the threat of a smacking – if you were very naughty – was an ever-present threat.
For my own part, however, I was a real ‘mummy’ s boy’ and was generally always very well behaved, as I delighted in being good for my mother. However, I’m sure that plenty of timid children like me – who were rarely put over the parental knee – still wondered what a proper smacked bum would really feel like.
I particularly remember one incident at the end of a primary school day. My male class teacher spent a few moments amiably chatting with my mum about my work and progress. Then, out of the blue, he told Mum jokingly: “Don’t forget, you can always send him to me if he’s a naughty boy.” As we passed through the school gates, he gave me a playful smack on the seat of my shorts.
Of course, that teacher would be facing severe discipline himself nowadays, but this was the 70s and no-one thought anything at all about it. Still holding my mum’s hand, I remember dragging my heels in the playground and looking back – somewhat longingly – at my teacher as I rubbed my pretend ‘sore bottom’.
Despite the absence of real corporal punishment in my life, I quickly became obsessed with spanking. I had a little plastic desk chair in my room on which I sat to do my homework – but often it would serve another use. I would pretend that I had been a bad boy, pull down my trousers and pants and sit bare-bottomed on the make-believe ‘naughty chair’.
As I sat there ‘in disgrace’, I would sometimes look up ‘smacking’, ‘spanking’ and ‘slippering’ in my tatty old school dictionary, almost breathlessly expecting my mum to come in and find me like that, and maybe even give me my first real spanking over her knee.
She never did, I’m sorry to say – though, to this day, I really wish she had!
Contributor: Anonymous