I am from Germany, and grew up being cared for by my grandmother. She was always very loving to me – except when I did something wrong.
When that happened, I only ever received one kind of punishment – a spanking on my bare bottom. This was usually administered with a cane – my grandmother was a devout Christian and believed in the Biblical instruction to use ‘the rod’ for child discipline.
The worst experience of the cane I can remember happened when I was eight or nine years old. I don’t remember now why I was beaten that day, but after my caning – as she often did – my grandmother made me stand naked in the corner afterwards to think about my behaviour, and its consequences.
So there I was, naked as the day I was born and with a striped, stinging bottom, when the doorbell rang. My grandma opened the door and there were two women from the Jehovah’s Witnesses standing outside.
To my absolute horror, my grandma invited the two women in. As they came through the hallway, I overheard her confide in the other women that I had just been punished, adding that they could leave if they felt uncomfortable with that. However, the women raised no objection and they all came into the room where I was standing with my very red bottom on show.
I heard one of the women say to grandma: “Well, it certainly looks like he deserved his punishment! His bottom must have hurt a lot, but that’s what the rod is for, of course.”
My grandma invited the women to stay for coffee, during which they all talked about the best way to discipline youngsters. The two women described in some detail how they spanked their own children when they were naughty, and of course my grandma was not shy about telling them about my own catalogue of misdemeanours and how she chastised me for them.
It was an extremely humiliating experience at the time, but of course today it excites me when I look back on it.
Contributor: Hermann