Considering it hurt so much at the time, you may think it odd that I remember my Mother’s spanking spoon with such affection, but it taught me and my siblings a great deal about morals and love.

Mother had many spoons in her kitchen which were used for mixing and stirring – but one with a particularly wide head stood on the counter on its own, standing up in a little ceramic pot. This was the spanking spoon, and on it, Mother had written a Bible reference. It was Proverbs 23:13: “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish them with the rod, they will not die.”

Well, I can assure you there were times when I was over her knee that I felt I might die all right – that thing could burn a hole in your butt with absolutely no trouble, even through pants. We were very rarely spanked bottom – you had to be really naughty for Mother to decide you’d earned that – but the sting that spoon could produce was more than capable of chastising a misbehaving child, believe me, even through a couple of layers of clothing.

In that respect, I think my sisters always felt they had a disadvantage to us boys when they were spanked. We were a very traditional Southern family, as you might have gathered,
When we got it bottom, that’s when we really feared the spoon. It stung like you’d sat down on a wasps’ nest.