I was four, and Nanny had promised to take me to Boston Common, where we could feed the pigeons. We would also ride the swan boats in the garden, for my favourite story at that time was Make Way for the Ducklings. I got dressed for the day with my embroidered hemmed dress, dress shoes, spring […]

When I was seven and Jeff was six, mother had bought us new coats for Easter and we were invited to tea on Easter afternoon at the Potters. Our coats matched, even though his had buttons that worked differently and no belt at the back of the waist. Each of us had black velvet collars, […]

The summer between 9th and 10th grade, we went as a family – mom, dad, me and my younger sister and two younger brothers – to Scotland to visit my grandmother, my dad’s mother. We flew to Scotland in July and stayed for the month with my grandmother. I was not especially happy to be […]

When I was 10 years old, I was extremely fond of the old radio shows that came on late on Sunday afternoons – The Shadow, Inner Sanctum and others. They started at 4pm and every Sunday I could be found lying on my stomach, drawing with my coloured pencils as I listened to the shows. […]

I grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1970s. A few houses away from us lived my aunt, my mother’s sister, and we were very close – almost like one family. Among other things, we owned just one car shared by both families. Both my mother and aunt bore multiple […]

A short extract from Nancy Friday’s book My Secret Garden. Correspondent Barbara reveals how exposure to corporal punishment in her formative years gave her a taste for the cane. I must tell you that whenever I have sex with a man, all the time I am pretending to myself that I am wearing long knickers, […]

During the early 1990s, spanking (or smacking, as we generally call it in the UK) was in transition. It was not frowned upon by the majority and it still happened a lot more than it does now, but it was not universal in the way it was in the 60s and 70s. This led to […]

Warning: This contribution is somewhat different from our usual content in its parameters, in that it references a spanking given by a father, and an explicit description of teenage sex. Please read no further if you think either of those factors might offend you. During the summer between eighth and ninth grades, I had convinced my […]

I’ve already told you about my first time over my stepmom’s knee, and my last – but this is story of the first time someone went across my own lap. I was 17 and given the job of babysitting two cousins (technically step-cousins) – a 10-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy. Though they weren’t raised in quite such […]

I was sent to spend part of the summer at my uncle and aunt’s house in rural Queensland, Australia. I was a city boy, born and bred and in Brisbane, and my parents were typical of the 1980s progressive Aussie middle class of the time.As a result, I was allowed a great deal of freedom […]