I was born in Italy at the beginning of the 1980s. By that time spanking’s popularity had begun to wane with parents. Certainly it wasn’t really talked about, and you certainly didn’t see children getting them, or talking about having been disciplined in that way.
No doubt in some poorer families corporal punishments were still deemed acceptable, but in many cases that involved a slap to the child’s face rather than their bottom.
For my own part, I have been attracted to and fascinated by spankings since I was very little. I don’t know where this attraction comes from, but one of the images that has always stuck with me is a spanking in the first episode of the cartoon ’Creamy Mami’ in the first episode. Sadly, though, I was never spanked in my childhood.
When I was five years old, I clearly remember drawing a picture of my mother spanking me for making my little brother cry. I remember showing it to her and explaining it in detail, in the hope that it might give her the idea to begin doing it for real.
Frustratingly, she was busy working at the time. She told me my picture was ‘cool’ but I needed to go back to playing. I remember being disappointed by this reaction, like she just wanted me out of the way because she didn’t want to be disturbed.
Another memory concerns the only spanking I ever saw in my house. It happened when I was about six. My brothers and I were at home with Marisa, the babysitter. I remember we were at the table and we were having lunch, then my younger brother (who is a year younger than me) started throwing a tantrum about something.
Marisa let all of us other children out on to the veranda, then we started hearing dull noises coming from the house. I looked at the glass door back into the house, and saw my brother standing next to Marisa. She was spanking him with a wooden spoon on the seat of his pants. My brother cried but without making a sound – I don’t know how he did it at five years old. Marisa used to slap us in the face or on our arms if we misbehaved, sometimes even with the wooden spoon, but this was the only time I saw her hit one of us on the butt.
At elementary school I had a teacher named Maria. When she scolded us, she would often threaten to take down our pants and undies and spank us in front of the whole class. Though she never did, I often had the impulse to do something stupid to see if she would keep that promise. Unfortunately I was extremely shy and therefore the fear of the shame – of being bare bottomed in front of my peers – rather than the pain, proved too much for me.
At the same school, when I was in the third grade, we were assigned a new foreign language teacher, which in Italy in those years was something of a novelty. Also that year, a girl from Venezuela arrived in our class. She was very pretty and very polite.
I remember one particular day we had a class with this new teacher and before arrived we kids were making a lot of noise. The teacher walked into the room and yelled at us to be quiet and sit down. I remember her giving us a good lecture on politeness and respect.
Afterwards, the Venezuelan girl put her hand hand up to speak. “In my country, if someone misbehaved in class they would get a spanking,” she said. The teacher turned to the rest of us, asking whether we thought she should start using this form of discipline. The impulse to get up and answer ‘yes’ was very strong – but even in that case, my shame prevailed. I have to say I regret it a bit – maybe it was a good opportunity!
By the time I was 13 going on 14, I became close friends with a gentleman who sold newspapers, and I took advantage of the friendship to purchase many magazines that were forbidden to minors. Obviously, I bought only and exclusively those in which there were articles or photos dedicated to spanking.
I marked the pages or highlighted key passages to find them faster, as spanking was a rare topic in sex magazines at the time – so these articles or photos or drawings were limited to a few lines or small photos. There certainly weren’t yet themed magazines around, at least not in Italian.
Despite these challenges, I had accumulated quite a bit of material that with the unsophistication of youth I kept hidden in a box under my bed.
One day, returning home, my mother told me she wanted to talk to me. I asked to postpone the conversation until later because I had a great desire to spend some time in the bathroom, if you know what I mean.
I went to my room but when I reached down to retrieve something from the box my blood froze. The box was gone. I got up and right behind me was my mom. She asked me if I was looking for something in particular. Of course I denied it but it was clear what had happened. My mom had found the box and thrown it away.
I sat down on the bed, filled with a mixture of shame, terror and concern. To my surprise, when my mom started talking, she was very calm. I don’t really remember mnuch of what she said, although she did ask me where I had got the material in the box. But for the most part, she talked and I just listened – I was totally somewhere else.
Only a few days later did I begin to think properly about it, and I focused on one thing in particular. I clearly remember my mother asking me if I had any fantasy I wanted to fulfil, or something I was particularly curious about that I wanted to try. “I’m your mom, Roberto, and if there’s anything you wanted to try, you can count on me.”
As I thought back to this comment now, with the benefit of hindsight, my brain exploded – my mom had been offering to spank me, if only I had asked! As I said, all the magazines and comics she had thrown out had passages about spanking highlighted. It was suddenly obvious she had seen them and had been offering to spank me.
Of course, at the time, I obviously said nothing. I was already far too embarrassed that she had seen the things I spent my moments alone with. In the days which followed this revelation, I thought about going back to talk with my mother about this, but once again my shyness and shame got the better of me.
Contributor: Roberto