My mother was definitely a believer in smacking naughty children. I was by no means the most unruly child of my cohort in school but like all children, I did need discipline, and when my mother was involved, that usually meant a sore bottom.
When I was very little I would most likely be smacked on the spot, most usually on the back of my bare legs, though if I had really exasperated my mother she would turn me over her knee and smack me on the seat of my knickers. Nothing too terrible.
Things changed, however, when I started primary school, and from then on mother would take me to her bedroom to spank me, the favoured instrument of correction being the back of an old ebony hairbrush which I gather even my grandmother had felt across her bum cheeks as a girl, and which Mum had been given during her own childhood. It was a family tradition, I think!
When she decided I deserved a sore bottom, my mother would do everything she could to be quite discreet about my punishment as far as my father was concerned. From a very early age, I remember being admonished to ‘come quietly with me to be smacked, because it upsets your father’.
My father was a sensitive man, so maybe he was upset at the thought of his little girl having her bottom well beaten. I was certainly fond of him, and a very biddable child, so although I was obviously far from happy when I was awarded a smacked bottom, I went meekly with Mum to her room, not least to get it over with quickly.
Once we were in the bedroom, Mum would close the door and talk to me for a few minutes about my misbehaviour. The spanking hairbrush was kept in her knicker drawer, I recall, rather appropriately! This would be produced once the lecture was over, Mum would take down my own underpants and then put me across her knee in the usual position, turning up my skirt or dress to expose my bare botty.
Mum would then take a clean hanky and put it in my mouth for me to bite on as I was spanked, again ostensibly to avoid upsetting my father – though maybe she didn’t want the neighbours to hear the punishment either, in case they criticised her: I honestly don’t know. Whatever, I bit down hard on the linen cloth as Mum applied hairbrush to bottom, and although I cried as I was done, I didn’t scream or yell – I just bit down harder. After I was let down off Mum’s knee, I would use the hanky to dry my eyes and blow my nose while I rubbed my stinging bum.
The punishment hurt all right but it was never excessive. I had pink rear cheeks for the rest of the day but it was rare for there to be any bruising and there was certainly none of that ‘can’t sit down for weeks’ nonsense I sometimes see in spanking fantasies. But looking back, I do wonder at just how obediently I went for those encounters with Mum’s hairbrush!