I was an only child in a middle class family. My parents weren’t particularly strict, but believed in a firm set of principles of behaviour. I didn’t have any trouble with this, being generally in agreement and, I think, reasonably well behaved.
But if I did transgress, and do something contrary to their wishes (and usually something about which I was ashamed), I would naturally and inevitably expect to be punished. My mother always took responsibility for my punishments.
She had the normal range available for the day – I was kept in (‘grounded’, in today’s parlance) for a given period, stopped from doing things I wanted to do, sent to my room, or had my pocket money withdrawn and so on.
Also in her armoury – quite normally for the time – was corporal punishment. Following age-old custom, if my actions deserved it I would be chastised. This was always administered in a traditional manner and on the usual place – with comprehensive ritual and formality, I was given a sore bottom.
Getting my ‘bottom tanned’ or receiving a ‘smacked bottom’ were not common experiences but neither were they that rare.
When I was in trouble at primary school, I was given a traditional spanking – my mother sat on a chair in her bedroom and put me over her knee. With my skirt pulled back and knickers pulled down, she smacked my bare bottom until it was hot and stinging.
As soon as I reached secondary school, I was deemed too big to go over her knee – but far from too big to receive a sore bottom. I then had to bend over, most often for the slipper.
Because I was only beaten when I was thoroughly in trouble, for something for which I needed a salutary lesson, her punishments were not lightly administered. I viewed them with considerable trepidation and they weren’t easily forgotten. However, I would say that on every single occasion that I was beaten, the punishment was fully deserved and appropriate.
Every so often, my mother used corporal punishment on me throughout my time at secondary school, right up to my leaving home for university.
In my early years at secondary school, when I was in serious trouble, and thoroughly deserved to be punished, she would discuss with me what ‘sentence’ I deserved – and usually I couldn’t disagree that a hiding was appropriate.
Having been informed that my fate was to get a ‘severe dose of the slipper’, ‘a whacking’ or ‘my bottom tanned’ (she used the terms interchangeably), she would never punish me immediately but would tell me when she would administer it, leaving a good while for me to think about what I’d done wrong.
Typically, as at school, she would tend to save up my punishment until the end of the school week and administer it when I got home on Friday afternoon. Like the boys at school, I knew what was coming and had all day to dwell on it.
I’ve always considered one of the more memorable sensations from my school days the feeling of increasing unease as it got nearer the time to go home – I would feel sick in my stomach, weak-kneed, couldn’t concentrate, and would need to visit the loo.
When I got home, my mother would send me to to my bedroom, where I would try to concentrate on my homework, usually failing since the anticipation of a whacking always left me in a real state.
I can say that there was some sexual feeling, though. I’ve always found my bottom one of my most erogenous zones and although I was always aware how much the tanning was going to hurt, I knew that afterwards, the intense burning sensation would be stimulating, when the stinging had died down and the warmth radiated from the back to my ‘front bottom’.
Perhaps more significantly, I have always been of a rather submissive nature, and turned on by a degree of humiliation and embarrassment. For example, during the punishment itself, I used to fantasise that I was getting it at school, in front of the class.
When my mother tanned me with ‘the slipper’, it was in fact a large old tennis shoe of my father’s, with a thick rubber sole, kept for the purpose in my wardrobe. I would have to pull up my school skirt or gymslip, gather it around my waist well out of the way, then bend over and put my hands on my knees.
When I got a bit older, mother made me kneel on the edge of my bed, then pull up my skirt and bend down, leaning on the bed whilst raising my bottom for the punishment. She always let me keep on my thin school cotton underpants (knickers, as we call them in England) but they never gave much protection as she administered the shoe.
She always used her full weight, with the strength of her tennis-trained arm, in applying each stroke – each was always given as hard as she could, whilst the severity of the tanning was varied by the number of belts given.
If she had determined that I needed a hiding, her punishments were never minor affairs. The slippering was always a serious punishment – never a few whacks for show but always at least a dozen, usually more.
I used to press my face into the bedspread, trying to keep from crying and calling out whilst the slippering was administered. I can well remember how each successive whack would sting more and more, whilst the burning of my bottom grew to an almost unbearable level.
Afterwards she would leave me, lying on the bed, usually having a bit of a cry. Eventually I would get up, in order to pull my knickers down in front of the full-length mirror in my room and examine the damage.
It never ceased to astonish me how red the slippered area of my bottom had become compared to the rest. My mother always concentrated on the lower part of my bottom, where I sat down – which had become a deep dark red, mottled with the bruising that a tennis shoe leaves.
I would then get into my nightdress and eventually go to sleep, lying on my front with the bedclothes and my nightdress pulled up to help my behind cool off. I couldn’t have sat down at all straight after the punishment, but even the following day I was still really sore.
I have to say that compared with the apparent effects of a slippering on boys at school, I always seemed to find it both more painful at the time, and the soreness lasted for longer – evidently a girl’s bottom is more sensitive, in my case at least.
Once, when she had given it me midweek, I can remember how uncomfortable it was sitting on hard classroom chairs the day after. This constant reminder of the recent tanning of my bottom was all part of the punishment – my mother always said that she hadn’t done it hard enough if I wasn’t still sore the day after.
Contributor: Helen