Every May, the peaches start to come in over Georgia in the southern US – in fact, it’s often called the Peach State. This happened when I was five years old, and the youngest of three children.
I remember I was playing outside when I came in to get a drink of water. Even for the end of May, it was a hot day. And there they were – a bowl of the first peaches Momma had just brought back from the grocery store, sitting in the fruit bowl on the dining room table. They looked so beautiful, ripe and sweet.
“Momma, can I get a peach?” I asked. “No you may not, Diane,” she called back from the kitchen. “Those are for dessert tonight.”
I got some water but then, passing by the dining room again on the way back out, the devil entered me. There were plenty of peaches in the bowl – more than enough for one each at dinner – so I took the smallest, put it down the front of my panties to conceal it, and gingerly retreated back to the garden.
I found a quiet corner away from my two siblings (my sister is two years older, my brother four) and consumed the beautiful sweet fruit with glee. It tasted heavenly. After carefully discarding the stone in a flower bed, I rejoined the others.
Unfortunately for me, it never occurred to me that among my Momma’s many talents was her ability to count. Dinner was about to begin, and we were waiting for the usual instruction to go wash our hands, when Momma called me into the dining room.
“Diane, did you take a peach after I told you not to?” “No Momma!” She made no comment but approached me and took my hands in hers. The stickiness of the sweet juice on my palms told its own story.
“Diane! How could you be so dishonest and disobedient? Didn’t I tell you you’d get a peach at dinner? Yet you thought it was all right to steal and then to lie about it? You are in for a spanking, young lady. I think it had better be the paddle.”
I had started crying at the mention of a spanking, but when Momma said it would be the paddle, I was really frightened. Up until that point, I had only felt the palm of her hand on my bare bottom when I misbehaved, but I had seen my brother and sister taken upstairs for the paddle, heard the screaming and crying from upstairs, and seen the marks and soreness it left on their bottoms. I was terrified.
I tried begging Momma but by now she wasn’t listening to me. “Sarah,” she said, turning to my sister, “will you fetch me the paddle, please?” “Yes, Momma,” Sarah replied with undisguised glee, returning with it a few seconds later.
I should explain that the paddle my Momma kept for spankings was no small little bit of wood. It was the kind sold as a novelty in tourist shops, over a foot long and a quarter inch thick. That she was even considering using it on a five-year-old’s bottom was a sign of how seriously I had transgressed in her eyes.
Momma took my sticky little hand in hers. “Come on!” she said, “It’s time for that lil’ peach of yours to be ripened, young lady.”
I was led upstairs, crying my eyes out already. We were about to head into the bedroom my sister and I shared when Momma obviously had a thought. Instead, I was marched into the bathroom. “I think you’d better use the toilet first,” Momma said, “I don’t want you wetting on me. And then you can wash those guilty hands.”
She pulled down my shorts and panties, then sat me on the toilet. I was so upset and frightened it took me quite a while to pee into the bowl. While she was waiting, Momma washed her own hands. “Finished?” “Yes, Momma.” “Right – clean yourself up.”
After I wiped, I stood up and went to pull my shorts and panties back up, but Momma said: “Leave those there – you won’t be needing them for a while. Wash your hands.” I hobbled over to the sink and complied. “Right – come along!” Bare-bottomed and with my clothes still around my ankles, I was led awkwardly to my room, where Momma sat on the bed and looked me straight in the eye.
She then delivered an almighty lecture about stealing and lying, most of the contents of which you can guess. Then I was put across her lap and I felt the hard wood laid against my fanny. It felt huge, and easily covered both buttocks simultaneously. Then without another word, Momma lifted the paddle and brought it down smartly. I had never felt burning like it and I screamed at the top of my voice.
Considering it was my first time for the paddle, I don’t believe Momma went easy on me at all – in her eyes, my crimes were too serious for that. When she finally let me up, and I was told to go and look at myself in the mirror (‘that’s what a naughty girl’s bottom looks like’), my poor lil’ peach was more like a ripe tomato. I desperately rubbed my newly-spanked fanny but no amount of rubbing could take away the sting my Momma’s paddle had put there.
Still in complete silence (apart from my bawling), Momma stripped me of the rest of my clothes, then marched me naked back to the bathroom, where I was instructed to wash my face and clean my teeth. Back in the bedroom, Momma put me into pyjamas and then ordered me into bed. There was to be no dinner for me that night – just a sore bottom to think about.
That was by no means the last time the paddle and I had a meeting, but it was more than a year before I was naughty enough to deserve wood across my fanny again, although I had several ‘words’ from Momma’s hand.
Contributor: Diane