Once, when visiting my cousin in Kansas, he was acting really rudely and his mom said: “That’s it – we’re gonna have a little talk.”

With this, she led him outside while the rest of the family talked and laughed and continued to have a great time.

A few minutes later, his mom came back and a few minutes after that, my cousin returned with his eyes red from crying and apologised to everyone.

What I didn’t realise until later was that the ‘little talk’ was actually a spanking – and I found out because the next day, we both got in trouble together and she had a ‘little talk’ with both of us.

She didn’t make us take off our basketball shorts and underwear but they were thin anyway, so the belt really did hurt – though not as much as when I got bare bottom spankings with a belt from my parents at home. We both started crying long before she was done spanking us. We were both nine years old at the time.