My great-grandmother used to watch me one afternoon a week at her house after my half-day of kindergarten was over – this was in the early 1970s.

I used to enjoy going over, especially as sometimes my two cousins would be there and we’d play while my grandmother and aunt chatted. My two cousins were called Jim and Kali. Kali was a small blonde girl with an attractive smile. Jim, by contrast, was a typical 2nd grader. He liked GI Joe and guns and had a bit of a bad reputation – at least, as bad a rep as someone of his years can accrue! My Aunt Susie was a slender brunette with a sharp voice – I guess she’d be in her 20s at the time.

One of the games we would play involved standing on an old chair, looking out of the window and pretending that we saw Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny – then tell the other two kids to come and look. Obviously, when they did, we would say something like: “Too late, you missed it.”

We thought the game was hilarious. The problem was, we messed up the chair pretty bad and finally we were told it was against the rules to climb on the chair. We still continued to do it week after week, however, and things finally came to a head when my grandmother asked Aunt Susie to make sure we stopped.

My aunt gather all three of us kids together and with her finger pointing at each of us during the lecture, threatened that the next child to climb on the chair would get a spanking on the ‘bottom’ in front of everyone. All us younger ones knew exactly what she was talking about.

All three of us took the warning very seriously – but in my case, it also sent a mysterious hot flush through my body. I had seen Kali spanked across her mother’s knee briefly at her house once and felt the same feelings.

That spanking , wasn’t very severe – indeed, I remember Kali laughing for most of the way through it, and my aunt – who seemed frustrated by the situation and was in any case preoccupied with something else – gave it up after a few minutes.

Back at my own home, I was spanked occasionally with a ping pong paddle, or a ‘whip’ which was actually the remnants of a toy fire hose – but nothing so formal as over the knee and in front of everyone.

So after that stern warning, I don’t think any of us really had any intention of climbing on the chair again. However, we had been doing it for a long time and out of habit, that very same day, I jumped up on the chair. I quickly realised what I had done and jumped back down quickly.

It was a total accident and I began to sweat and look around to see if anyone had seen me. No-one had – but as I examined the chair for signs of my sin, I noticed a dirt mark from my shoe. Try as I might to get it off, I could not. So I did what any naughty young one would do I ran away, hoping for the best.

I actually managed to forget about my misdeed for a while, but eventually I heard my aunt’s shrill voice call out: “All three of you – get up here, right now!”

Of course, we came running and arrived to find my aunt and grandmother standing at the scene of my crime, their arms folded and faces like thunder.

All of our faces , my own included, went flat with fear. Unfortunately for my cousins, this naughty little boy had no intention of admitting the print was mine. I guess it was a sufficiently vague mark as to preclude my aunt from guessing whose it really was, but I could tell she had every intention of finding out whose it as.

At first, my aunt threatened to spank all three of us if the culprit didn’t own up, but I think she was privately very reluctant to hand out three sore bottoms. Of course, this is all many years ago now and I forget exactly how things went down but Jim, with his reputation, finally got the blame and the sentence.

I’m ashamed to say I didn’t have any moral qualms back then about Jim taking the punishment for me. A spanking like that was so outside my realm of experience, in terms of the pain and the embarrassment. So I didn’t feel bad, just relieved.

She and I were really close and stood there, holding on to each other’s arms in fear, as Jim’s spanking got under way. Naturally, he protested loudly that he was innocent – he blamed Kali, then he blamed me. However, he forgot all about us both as Aunt Susie produced a small stick, about the length of a flute.

Jim screamed and tried to run off, but he had no chance and was quickly caught by his mother, who was now even angrier at him for not taking his punishment obediently. Aunt Susie sat down, de-pantsed her boy and put him over her knee in the dreaded position.

I looked at Jim’s face, and it was already tear-stained and disheveled from his crying and protests – it almost looked like he had already been spanked. Aunt Susie had him pinned, with an elbow pressing down on his back. Nevertheless, Jim struggled – his mom was way stronger than he was, of course, but when a child is freaking out that much it’s still hard to control them.

What really struck me at the time was the stick ready to do the business. Some years later, I was beaten with a similar stick over my mother’s lap. On that occasion my pants were up, but within two strokes my eyes were watering and I was frantically wondering how I could endure my beating.

That being the case, I can’t imagine how much the stick stung Jim’s bottom.
I’m not sure we even heard the noise the stick made as it struck his bottom because he was making so much noise about his spanking. He had already been screaming at the top of his lungs even before the punishment began. There was no ceremony in it the way you read about in Victorian times and such – this was an overpowering, followed by a beating.

My aunt was spanking briskly, and I knew I could not have endured a similar beating – although, had it been me, Aunt Susie would probably have gone easier on me, as I was not her child and I certainly wouldn’t have attempted to run off. Years later, in my fantasy life, I have wished it had been me across her knee, but at the time there was no way I would willingly have submitted to a punishment like that.

This wasn’t child abuse – but neither was it a walk in the park for Jim. Even after the first stroke of the stick, he was ready to apologise and promise his mom anything – as any young one would have been under those circumstances.

If you’ve ever been spanked as a child – with no control over the situation – you know the panic I’m talking about. You can never really relive it as an adult, because if you are playing spanking with someone else, you know you could stop it if you wanted to; but as a child, you can’t.

By this time, though, I’d forgotten that it really should be me lying over my aunt’s knee, my bottom exposed for everyone to see, and I actually started to enjoy watching the spanking. Kali, who I already thought was cute, leaned over to me with an excited smile during it and whispered: “This is the best I’ve ever seen.” I agreed. Naturally, we didn’t ask Jim his opinion – but I think it was pretty clear.

my aunt finally let her son stand up again,
And how she warmed him!

A few days later, when I got together with my cousins again, Kali told me that Jim had convinced her that it wasn’t him who had climbed on the chair. She added that it must have been me because she knew it wasn’t her.

Naturally I denied it, but in my heart I knew we all knew the truth now. I was naturally very scared that Jim and Kali would tell their mother about my deception. Whether they did or not, I don’t know, but my bottom never paid the price for this particular act of disobedience. Looking back, this episode is definitely one of the things which got me interested in spankings.