Friday, August 15, 2014

Old-Fashioned Punishments

A little earlier on, I touched on a subject that I  want to expound on here. In one of my earlier blog postings leading up to the Crimson Moon party, I mentioned that there were a lot of young people in the spanking scene who enjoy role play; role plays that include punishments they never had to face in real life. I'm talking about school paddling, getting spanked at home for getting in trouble at school, writing sentences or having your mouth washed out with soap. These are viewed by many as very old-fashioned punishments, with no place in our modern, more civilized world. If you listen to the liberal rhetoric, we're a much kinder and gentler world now and such barbaric punishments that hurt and/or humiliate children have no place here. Even Great Britain, that lover of corporal punishment, took the cane out of its public (state) schools thirty years ago. The result of all this coddling is that on both sides of the pond, we now have a generation that has grown up without rules or consequences for breaking them. Young 20-somethings then come into the spanking scene having never (or rarely) experienced such things firsthand. So to them, it's all fun and games. To those of us who grew up with the threat of such horrible punishments, these are not laughing matters and even forty years after the fact, I still shudder at some of the punishments I either received or witnessed. 

Let me give you an example. The infraction I'm about to relate to you was a serious one back in the day and the punishment the perpetrators received was severe. You can debate with yourself whether or not this was abuse. To me, it was justice. Even as a child, I understood that, though a kid might rebel, in the end, the adults would win. They always won and it was right that they won. I was 11-years-old and in only my second year in public school (I'd gone to Catholic school before that). My  teacher was a very tall (6'6") Irishman named Jack Donnelly. He was the kind of teacher that most kids liked. He was friendly, always willing to help a student who was lagging behind and took the job of educating us seriously. However, he brooked no challenges to his authority. Because of his size, he intimidated all of us. Even the toughest boys in the class, the ones who could easily beat older boys in a fight, were afraid to push him too far. Now, Mr. Donnelly wasn't the sort who enjoyed spanking children. He saw it as a necessary tool for controlling his large class. One thing he hated was a bully. It was one thing for the toughs in our class to fight with older boys, but he hated bullies who preyed on the weaker and smaller. And, as hard as it may seem to believe now, back then I was the weaker and smaller. I have related before that I was bullied as a child. Most of the bullying came from the other girls in my class, but every so often one of the boys would get it into his head to try his hand at it. School had only just started, which meant it was the time of year (late summer) when we always experienced a drought. Because of how dry it was, the grasshoppers were out in droves. You could hardly walk anywhere without stepping on one. I had and still have a fear of bugs. Things that fly are especially scary to me. So as you can imagine, I hated grasshoppers with a passion One day, I was walking past the field on the playground because the bell was imminent and you didn't want to be late coming back from recess for any reason. A couple of boys who were in my class (and who had terrorized me and others in the past) came and sidled up to me. They spent about a minute making small talk with me before I realized that they had steered me back to the field. 
"The bell's gonna ring," I said trying to get around them, but they had my path blocked. One of the boys held my arms while the other one put a grasshopper down the front of my dress. I shrieked like I'd been shot. I can still remember it to this day. Then they pushed me down and walked off, laughing like it was the funniest thing they had ever seen. I jumped around trying get it out, not realizing it meant me no harm and was probably just as afraid of me as I was of him. I finally worked the hated bug out of my undershirt (I wasn't wearing a bra just yet) and walked back to class shaking like a leaf. I never told anyone what those boys did to me. Instead, I set about planning my revenge. I was a quick thinker and I had a somewhat devious mind for such a docile, well-behaved child. I didn't quite know what my plan was, but I knew something had to be done. Four days later, contrary to our normal weather patterns for that time of year, we had a bad rainstorm, which turned the field into a sinkhole of mud. The announcement went out that all students to stay off the field during recess that day. That morning, as I ate my breakfast, I thought of the perfect revenge. I knew before I ever got to school or heard the announcement that it was going to be an "off the field" day. I grabbed a plastic bag from my mother's pantry and set off for my bus stop. I hid the bag in one of my school books and no one was the wiser. That morning, when the announcements were read and, sure enough, we were being told not to go on the field, I knew I had the perfect way to get them back. At first morning's recess, I took my bag and filled it with mud (making sure not to be seen). Then before the bell rang, I snuck back inside and smeared mud on the boots of the boys who had bullied me. I knew whose boots were whose. I also smeared some in the hallway leading directly into Room 6A. Then I ran to the rest room across the hall and washed my hands. Sure enough, Mr. Donnelly spotted the mess and asked whose boots those were. The two bullies readily confessed that those were their boots, but had no idea how the mud got on them. Of course, Mr. Donnelly wasn't fooled for a moment. He had the boys on their hands and knees cleaning up "their" mess. All the while, I sat there with a shit eating grin on my face. They now knew who the culprit was and they lost no time in telling Mr. Donnelly just who had done the deed. He was aghast. I was supposed to be a young lady. I then relayed the tragic tale of how they had put a disgusting bug down the front of my dress and how much distress this had caused me. Mr. Donnelly lost no time in getting the boys in front of the class. He loved taking kids who thought they were tough guys "down a couple of pegs" as he put it. He put each boy over his knee in front of the whole class and worked the seats of their jeans over with his enormous right hand. Those boys, who thought it had been just hilarious to watch me jump around tearing at my clothes were now getting a taste of what it meant to be in an uncomfortable position. Then he stood them up and ordered them to apologize to me. Standing there rubbing their no doubt stinging bottoms, they mumbled their pathetic "sorries" to me.

Now the above photo is from a website I mentioned in another post called "Straight Lads Spanked". The young man getting spanked here is named Ben and he's ended up in this position (across the knee of "community spanker". Mr. X) because he's a bully. He picked on a boy who was smaller than him by, according the the write up for the video, lacing his drink with Viagra and locking him in the bathroom during an awards banquet (the reason the boy is wearing a suit). Karl, the boy that Ben bullied, has no way out and his frantic parents have called the police. But instead of going to jail, young Ben is given a choice. He can choose to report to Mr. X for a proper spanking. Of course, Ben chooses the spanking and thinks it's a small price to pay. What the photo doesn't show is that Mr. X has invited Karl to come by and watch his tormentor's humiliation. Mr. Donnelly would have approved, bless him.

Unfortunately, we now live in an age where such punishments are seen as the products of a different era. Humiliating a student because he's a bully is seen as revenge and not discipline. Who in their right mind would prescribe such a punishment? More than likely, the little bully would be sat down and asked if everything was OK at home. My father taught me that the way to handle a bully is to give them a taste of their own medicine, which I did every chance I got. This time, I got off Scot free. I wasn't always so lucky. But who among us doesn't savor the sight of a bully getting the tables turned on him (or her)? I know I did.

Now about writing sentences...this was a popular punishment when I was in school. Teachers who believed more in busy work than sting backsides as a deterrent to mischief often prescribed 100 lines for students who misbehaved. I had one those, too and she made me wish I was back in Mr. Donnelly's class. Believe me when I tell you that the pain from a few swats is nothing compared to a writer's cramp. This is exactly the reason that teachers gave out sentences; because they knew how bad writer's cramp hurt. Kids would do almost anything to get out of having to write sentences. I remember a teacher who made me write the same sentence 200 times and then, when I turned in my neatly written lines, ripped the papers in half and tossed them into the trash can without even looking at them. It was probably at that moment (or a similar one) where I realized why people kill other people. Everyone hated sentences and almost every kid I know would rather have taken a paddling in front of the whole class than write them. 

Mouth soaping is something I have a little experience with, too. Parents in my mom and dad's generation swore by this remedy for "potty mouth" the same way some parents do hot saucing today, although it was way less controversial. My Uncle Carroll gave me a mouth soaping I'll never forget when I was about eight years old. I can't imagine it was because I swore. I don't even think I knew any swear words back then. I think it's more likely I was "soaped" (as we kids called it) for the alternate reason: lying. My Uncle Carroll was actually my mother's uncle. He was the older brother of my grandmother. Since my mother was an only child, all of my aunts, uncles and cousins were actually her aunts, uncles and cousins. Anyway, Uncle Carroll lived with my Aunt Helen about four blocks away from us. I loved going over there, especially in the fall when their apple trees were full of ripe fruit and I knew a pie was in the oven. She was quite an astounding cook, as were all the women on my mother's side of the family. Anyway, on this day, I had just popped down to ask Aunt Helen if she and Uncle Carroll wanted to come over and play bridge with Mom and Dad that evening. She asked me to wait in the living room while she spoke to my uncle. While I was waiting, I occupied myself with my new Duncan yo yo, which I had purchased only a few days previously with money earned at a highly successful lemonade stand. I wasn't very good at yo yoing at that time. In fact, my older brother had just shown me my first trick the day before and I was eager to practice. While I was occupied, I underestimated the length on my string and the yo yo slammed down on a souvenir ashtray on the coffee table. It was one of those big ceramic ones that had some destination stamped on it. It was so heavy that instead of smashing to pieces, it broke clean in half. I held my breath, waiting for one of them to come see what had caused the crash, but no one did. So I just pushed the pieces back together and it looked like nothing had happened. My aunt reported they would be over right after dinner and did my mother want to borrow her punch bowl for a baby shower they were throwing the next day? I figured she probably did because I had never seen a punch bowl at our house. That evening, after my older sister and I had done the supper dishes, the four adults played bridge. We had to stay out of the way and entertain ourselves the best we could. It's a good thing we were imaginative children because we were often left to our own devises like this when our parents had company. The three of us girls were in our room playing Mystery Date (who remembers that game?) when there was a smart rapping on our bedroom door then it flew open. My dad stormed into the room the way he only did when someone was in trouble. 
"Cheryl Kay, come out here," he said pointing to the door.
Now, in our house, when you got called by your first and middle name, you were in deep trouble and it was best to just obey and not ask any questions. I followed him out to the living room where the card table was set up and the punch bowl Aunt Helen had bought was sitting on the bar in our dining room. 
"Uncle Carroll has something to ask you," my father said.
"What?" I asked.
He stood there with hands on hips.
"Did you break something while you were over at our house earlier?" he asked, fixing me in a stern gaze made all the more menacing by the fact that he had a glass eye.
I put on my best innocent expression.
"No," said, lying through my teeth.
Now, I was raised by saved parents and we studied the Bible together so I was well aware of how bad it was to lie. 
"Well, that's funny," Uncle Carroll replied, "because that ash tray was fine when you got there and cracked in half when you left."
"Maybe you broke it?" I said.
My father stayed out of it. I think he was just waiting to see how deep I was planning to dig this particular hole? 
"I didn't break it," my uncle said.
"Well, I don't even smoke," I said in a smart ass tone of voice that caused my father to raise an eyebrow, a warning to tread lightly.
"No, but you yo yo," Uncle Carroll said. "Your aunt said you had one with you when you came over."
"I'm not supposed to play with it indoors," I said. 
"That doesn't mean you didn't!" Uncle Carroll replied, getting his Applegate blood up.
The Applegates were well known for their short fuses and even as a kid I realized that I had probably taken this confrontation past the point of no return. Unfortunately for me, there was also French blood on their mother's side (my great-grandmother's side) as the Vaniers were also known to have a few hotheads among their number. 
"I did no such thing!" I said, proving that I could get just as angry as my grown up relatives.
"You're lying, young lady," Uncle Carroll said. "That ash tray was from a trip your aunt and I took out west the year before Lee was born."
My mother's cousin, Lee was the older of the two sons from this marriage. Kim was the younger. They had also had a daughter, Nyla who was the youngest and quite spoiled. I found her totally glamorous because she had her ears pierced and wore make up. 
"I didn't break it," I lied again.
Before I knew what was what, my uncle grabbed me and carried me under his arm to the kitchen sink. My mother was going to nursing school at the time and had developed a mania about soap from which I have never really recovered. She kept a large bar of Lifebuoy soap at the sink for hand washing. My uncle hoisted me up and turned on the water. Then he picked up the beige colored bar of soap and ran it under the faucet. Meanwhile, I can clearly see what's coming so I tried to wrestle out of his grip. I was a skinny kid then, nothing to pick up and nothing to cart around. He brought the soap to my mouth and forced it between my teeth, where the bar hit ever uneven crevice of every tooth in my mouth. I recall I was barefoot, but that didn't stop me from giving his exposed ribs a couple of solid kicks. He put the bar down and sat on one of the nearby bar stools, where he put me over his knee, pulled down my pants and gave me such a hard spanking that now, 45 years later, I can still remember how bad it hurt. My parents, seeing that I got what I had coming to me, didn't protest this indignity to one of their offspring. 
"Now you can burn at one end and bubble at the other," Uncle Carroll said, giving my bare bottom a couple of parting whacks and setting me on my feet.
I was wretched, you can believe that. I ran to the bathroom sobbing and slammed the door. The commotion, meanwhile had brought my siblings from every corner of the house to see what was left of the floor show. 

As you can see, lying and destruction of property were frowned on back when I was a kid. For a parent, the only thing that came close was forcing a teacher to stop the lesson and deal with you. The old rule about "spanked at school, spanked at home" was adhered to in our home, at least in the circumstances that my dad discovered it. 


The young man over the knee of his "dad" in this picture is Karl. And yes, this is another one from the Straight Lads Spanked website (in the interest of having some kind of pictorial accompaniment to my awesome words). Karl got the cane at school and so his father is doing what my father would have done in that situation. To show how much they strive for realism on this website, Karl was indeed given the cane (spanking models often shoot more than one film a day) so that the cane marks are clearly visible on his bottom. When he's not making spanking videos, Karl is a scrappy amateur boxer. Clearly, this kid has a thing for pain. Anyway, he gets a hard spanking from his dad because he "copped the cane" at school for skipping class and also getting caught kissing a girl behind the bicycle sheds. Two punishments in one day seems awfully unfair but Karl endures both a very hard caning and then a slippering from his old man, poor kid.

I suffered just such an indignity when I was in eighth grade. Well, except that I wasn't naked, but you get the idea. I hated my homeroom teacher, Mr. Jorgenson with a passion. I can put his name up here now because he died last year. He was my worst nightmare--a person in authority who loved to torture people. If you had a weakness of any sort, he would exploit it. When he discovered that I was hard of hearing, he deliberately seated me as far in the back of the room as he could. When I complained I couldn't hear him, he said he would get me an ear horn for Christmas. What a lovely guy he was. Anyway, we had just returned from Christmas break and you could feel the melancholy in the air. We knew there wouldn't be another break until Easter. I'd had minor surgery about a week earlier (right before my birthday) and I was still feeling a bit tired and out of sorts. I was in no mood to take crap from anyone. But, unfortunately, my bullies were still at it. The PTA was meeting in the gym that particular day (where we normally ate lunch) so we would be eating at our desks. Mr. Jorgenson, as always, would be eating in the teacher's lounge. One of the lunchroom monitors was sent to keep an eye on our class. That day's meal included a chocolate chip cookie (and not good ones), which most of used as Frisbee's or hand grenades. A girl in my class, Debbie Hale, chose to crumble hers over my head. 
"That's the way the cookie crumbles," she said as her sycophants laughed. 
I wanted to deck her, but I didn't. The lunchroom lady was no help. I walked right up to her with crumbs falling off of my hair and she acted like nothing had happened. Well, OK, I guess I'm on my own here. I managed to get most of the crumbs out of my hair, but not all of them so I was met with "You have dandruff!" by several kids in my class. I thought to myself how Mr. Donnelly would have settled their hash. But Mr. Jorgenson was a bully himself and so not likely to find my plight all that compelling. So of course, being somewhat cagey, I waited for my chance to avenge myself. When lunch was over (but the bell hadn't yet rung for recess) Debbie lifted her desk top to get something out of her desk and I saw my chance. I made like I was going to the pencil sharpener and as I walked past her, I closed the desk on her head. It's not like I slammed it really hard or knocked her out or anything. I just gave her a headache. When Mr. Jorgeson returned, he was immediately told by the lunchroom lady what had happened. But she conveniently left out the part where Debbie smashed her cookie over my head. Mr. Jorgenson appeared shocked. Now he had seen some of the bullying I had been subjected to firsthand, but for some reason he acted like this was the first time he'd heard anything about it. Both Debbie and I were walked briskly out into the hallway and paddled. Being accustomed to physical punishment, I took the four swats pretty well, despite how hard he paddled me. Debbie, being a spoiled rich girl made a big fuss about it. He took it considerably easier on Debbie than he did me. 
"The next time there's any kind of physical altercation in my class room involving either of you, you'll regret the day you were born," he said angrily. "I went easy on both of you, remember that."
Oh yeah, buddy, it sure felt like it. The worst part was that he gave me a note to give to my parents, telling them that he had had to punish me for "assaulting" another student. I wonder to this day if Debbie got a similar note. Anyway, I knew better than to not hand it over. He instructed me to have one of them sign the note to prove that I had showed it to them, so there was no way I could just drop it in the trash and forget about it. If I had done that, I could forget about ever sitting down comfortably again.I spent the rest of the day in misery, both physically and emotionally. My stomach churned from the stress of having to face my parents. I didn't think my father would be particularly mad because was the one who had told me "Don't ever start a fight, but make sure you finish it." But my mother would be mortified. I was a young lady now and I was expected to act like one.

When I got home that afternoon, my mother had just woken up. She worked third shift and so the time we were at school was her time to sleep. Dutifully, I handed her the note.
"What's this?" she asked, taking it.
"Read it for yourself," I told her.
She did and looked at me like I wasn't her daughter, but some devil spawn that had been swapped for her daughter.
"It wasn't as bad as he made it out to be," I said.
"You slammed a wooden desktop down on a girl's head because she crumbled a cookie over your head?" she asked. "You could have seriously hurt her."
"It was the last straw," I replied. "It wasn't about the cookie. It was about a lot of stuff."
"When your father sees this, he won't be happy," she told me.
"You could just sign it," I said. "He doesn't have to see it."
"Oh he's seeing it, young lady," my mother assured me. "You can just go to your room and wait for him."
Normally, my mother wasn't a "wait till your father gets home" kind of mom. She normally handled the small brush fires that occurred during the day. But this was serious. So I went to my room and I waited for my dad to come home from work. I knew he would be tired and would just want his dinner and some peace and quiet. My sisters sat in the room with me (we shared it, after all) and gave me moral support. When we heard Dad's car pull into the driveway, my sisters ran for the hills. I couldn't hear distinct words, but I heard my parents having a conversation. I heard my dad's footsteps and he jingle of his belt being unbuckled. Oh man, was I ever in for it.


The young man getting the belt across his bottom is Wayne. Straight Lads Spanked does a series called "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home", which is really popular with fans who like domestic scenes. I like Wayne because he has a tattoo on his bottom. But, at any rate, Wayne has been a very naughty boy. He was caught smoking pot at school. Very, very stupid as I could have told him from experience. At least his "dad" positioned him nice and comfy with a pillow under his hips (I have a feeling that this was done more for the fans, since putting a pillow under the spankee's hips raises them up and creates a very nice visual, as we see here). My dad charged into the room like a bull elephant.
"Tell me what happened," he said.
As calmly as I could, I told him about how this girl had been picking on me all year and I had just had enough. He seemed to soften a little. Well, as much as a Marine with a belt in his hand can soften. 
"I don't think she'll bother me again," I said.
"But your teacher had to paddle you," he said, "so you know what that means."
"He didn't have to," I said. "He wanted to. And she didn't get near what I got."
"Her butt's probably not as tough as yours," Dad said. "You know what to do."
"It really wasn't fair," I said, trying any way I could to get out of the agony that was coming.
"Turn over," he said.
"I'm still sore," I told him.
Now, keep in mind I had just turned 14 years old. I thought the time when my father would spank me was past, but I guess not.
"I'll count to five and you'd better be turned over," he said, beginning to count.
Knowing this was a lose-lose situation for me, I turned over. Without a word, my dad gave me a dozen or so licks with that awful belt of his and then put it back on.
"I went easy on you because you already got it once today," he said.
That was the second time in one day someone had told me they had taken it easy on me. 
"Your mom signed the note, so we're square," he said. "Now come eat dinner."

I guess, in a role play scenario, any of the above scenes would be good, as they were in the spanking videos I cited. But getting any of them non-consensually as I did as a child, well, that's another matter entirely.




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