Saturday morning saw me awake quite early, lying in my bed and still reflecting on how radically my life had changed in just two days. On Thursday afternoon I was an average teenager hanging around with his friends and having fun, a guy who lived in a very ordinary 1980s household where discipline was relaxed and never involved corporal punishment. I had moved from that happy state to being a fifteen year old boy whose parents made him wear shorts to school, indeed the only guy in shorts in our school. I had been spanked by my father, mother, and even the guys who had been my closest friends. Even my thirteen year old brother and a twelve year-old first year had been unable to refrain from slapping the backs of my legs. It was as if a guy who wore shorts was required to accept discipline from anyone older or in long trousers.
Of course it was really all my own fault. Even I could see that. If it hadn't been for my secret fascination with short pants then I doubt that my parents would have thought up this form of discipline. I recalled some of my stolen moments wearing my grey school shorts in the privacy of my room when the rest of my family were out of the house. Those had been blissful moments and nearly always ended up with me stroking my penis.
As my mind drifted over my favourite fantasies - I was particularly fond of one where I was sent to boarding school and had to fag for a prefect who insisted that I wear shorts all year round and who liked to have me relieve his adolescent tension - my hand drifted quite naturally down to my penis once again. I stroked it carefully and caressed it into an erection.
Then I heard movement in the hall outside and suddenly my father was in my room telling me to get up right away. I complained, 'but Dad, it's Saturday'.
'Don't you give me any cheek young man. I don't care what day it is, you're not lying here all morning wasting time that would be better spent studying for your end of term exams.'
With that he whipped the duvet off my bed and revealed my swollen state. 'You better not have been playing with yourself Michael because if I ever find you masturbating I'll inflict some very special punishment on you'.
I didn't like to think about what a very special punishment might be, not after the severity of the spankings I had already suffered. With that I was out of bed and heading for the bathroom. When I got back to my room I found that Dad had laid out the clothes I would be wearing for the day. Instead of the grey shirts that I wore for school there was a navy blue polo shirt so that wasn't too bad. But I was still going to have to put up with my tight grey school shorts and the long knee socks with the school colours of purple and green on the turnovers. It was also obvious that I wasn't going to be allowed to wear my usual weekend trainers as the only footwear in the room was my black Clarkes school shoes.
I joined my parents and Sam, my younger brother, in the kitchen for breakfast. Sam was looking very relaxed and casual in his jeans and a t-shirt, the very image of a typical teenager in 1982. I really envied him, but then the uncharitable thought entered my mind that he would have to make the best of it today as Dad had said that he would be joining me in shorts from Easter, and that was only a week away. My Mum was also looking pretty relaxed. In fact she looked happier and more cheerful than I could remember her being for at least a couple of years. My Dad cracked a few jokes and asked us for our predictions about the day's football games. If it wasn't for the fact that I was wearing these stupid little-boy shorts I would have thought that it was going to be one of the most pleasant days we had had together in a long while.
After breakfast both Sam and I were told to go to our rooms and do our homework and revision for next week's house exams. Dad reminded us that he and Mum were going to spend the morning talking things through and working out a list of new rules that we boys would have to obey. I had kept hoping that this new strict thing of his would only last a couple of days and that we would quickly get back to normal but I guessed that he really meant it. These new rules were going to dictate my life for some time.
I arranged one of my pillows on the chair at my desk and settled down to work. My bottom was still throbbing a bit from time to time; that much spanking takes a long time to heal. I got a lot done that morning as I was sure that I didn't want another punishment session with Dad's clothes-brush. Just after one o'clock we were called down for lunch and then Dad announced that we would have a family meeting immediately afterwards for a presentation and explanation of the new rules.
The four of us went into the sitting room where Sam and I promptly sat down at either end of the sofa as far from each other as we could get. Straight away Dad was snapping at us.
'There's obviously two things that we need to get straight before we begin, Michael and Sam. First is that neither of you was told that you could sit and secondly you are to sit on the floor. I'll explain why in a minute.'
Well it sounded like a very strange demand given that there was plenty of comfortable furniture in the room but neither my brother nor I was really prepared to start arguing at this stage. So down we got and sat on the floor, me with my chin resting against my bare knees. I was still not used to seeing my knees so much but I was beginning to like the feeling of air moving round them. It felt sort of freeing, as if any moment now I could be up and away on an adventurous hike or just playing football on the green. Dad started,
'You may not realise it boys, but the past year or more has been really very difficult for your Mum and I. Things have not been easy and the fact that neither of you has been any help or tried to make life easier for us certainly hasn't helped. Your Mum and I have agreed that it's time we got some life of our own back instead of being constantly worried about what you two were getting up to.'
This was plainly going to be a very long lecture and high in the emotional blackmail stuff. I had heard it all before of course but this time was slightly different. Afterall I was now wearing grey school shorts and had received several spankings, both of which were entirely new developments in my life. Dad continued,
'We've not been able to invite friends around or even go out much together because we've always been worried that one or both of you would get into really serious trouble. That gang that you've been hanging around has been a nasty influence on you Michael. I've been around to some of their parents and they agree that it's high time that gang was broken up. You've built up a pretty vicious reputation; hanging around smoking and drinking. I suspect that there's even been some thieving going on but I'll overlook that for the moment because it's not going to continue in the future now that your Mum and I have decided to put a stop to it.'
Well, I considered that pretty low and mean, especially the stuff about us being vicious. We'd never beat anyone up or got into fights except for the occasional bit of rough and tumble amongst ourselves. As for the thieving accusation that was entirely unfounded. It was true in a very minor way but Dad had no evidence for it so it wasn't fair drawing that in.
'Anyway', said Dad, 'that's all in the past and we are going to start afresh now. We're going to take this chance to start a new life together as a family, and for you two that means that there will be quite a few new rules and some changes to how things are done in this household.'
Mum and Dad must have planned this discussion very carefully because this was where Dad stopped outlining the general approach and Mum began giving us the practical details.
'The first change', she told us, 'is that your father and I have decided that we are going to have a proper guest room again for visitors. So you will be sharing a room together from now on. After we're finished here Dad will help you move Michael's bed into the room that Sam is in now.'
'No way', cried Sam who had taken as much of this as he could bear. 'It's just not fair. Michael's been going round getting into trouble with that gang of his and now you're making me share with him. Punish him, why don't you? I don't have to take this.'
'Well, take it is precisely what you will do young man, and if there any more outbursts like that from you, you will be getting a taste of what your brother's already had.' Dad was clearly getting worked up about this and about to blow his top. 'And don't imagine for one minute, Sam, that we haven't discovered a few nasty truths about you as a result of our chats with other parents around here.'
Sam must have decided that it would be diplomatic to avoid any further confrontation, and Mum continued.
'You will be sharing a room together from now on but that's not all. We've decided that too much bathroom time is being taken up with you two fighting over who gets to it first. And what you get up to for all that time when you do get in there is something I prefer not to think about. So from now on you will be given a shared bath every other evening, and the door of the bathroom is to be kept open at all times when either of you is in there.'
I certainly didn't like the idea of sharing baths but I was particularly worried about the word 'given' in that sentence. Little children and babies were 'given' baths, surely Mum couldn't really mean that! And not even having privacy to go to the toilet or do all the other things that I preferred to do without being seen. This was a lot worse than I had expected.
'You both know that you will be dressing alike from next week onwards. Your father has told you that you will both be wearing shorts every day until Halloween. Well you might as well know now that I still disagree with him there. I think that you should have to stay in shorts until after you leave school; that way I'm sure that neither of you will be getting into so much trouble. So, think of yourselves as being on probation. We will have a review of your behaviour towards the end of September and if it doesn't match up to what we expect of you, then you will not be getting longs again for several years.'
Now this really couldn't be serious I thought. I was already the only teenager in town who was being made to wear shorts to school. I just couldn't begin to imagine what being forced to wear shorts at eighteen would be like. And surely she couldn't mean that we would have to wear shorts in the winter as well! It was taking a lot of effort on my part to stay quiet and listen to this. I suddenly realised that I was biting into my knee with the tension, and I could see that Sam's mouth was open wide in disbelief. This was totally bizarre; what could have got into the minds of our parents if they imagined that this kind of treatment could be inflicted on teenagers in 1980s England?
But obviously that wasn't all that my mother had to say. 'You will both have a nine o'clock bedtime from now on. In fact you will both be in bed by five to nine every night so that your father and I can watch the news in peace. We're fed up being told by you two that we can't watch what we want to watch on our own television in our own sitting room.'
Mum was clearly on a roll now because the words were streaming out and with every sentence I could see a whole bit more of my old life disappearing. Nine o'clock was pretty serious, especially seeing as how we had stayed up as long as we liked until now.
'You will spend every evening between six o'clock and half past eight in your room studying and doing homework. In addition there will be study periods set aside on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, so you can forget about having loads of time to go off with your friends frightening the living daylights out of people.'
'You will only be allowed out to go to school, or to take part in after school sports, or otherwise with adult supervision. There will be no running around on your own. If you decide after summer that you would like to do so then you will be allowed to join the scout troop at the parish church. But other than that you are both to make sure that your father and I know exactly where you are and what you are doing at all times.'
I could see that a couple of tears had escaped from Sam's eyes by now and I wasn't far off from crying myself. This was really too awful.
'Speaking of church, your father and I have neglected your spiritual upbringing for too long now and that has clearly had a detrimental effect on both of you. So starting next week with the Easter services we will be going back to church as a family every Sunday. Both of you will of course be properly dressed for church in your full school uniforms including ties.'
'And now that I've got on to your uniforms may I remind you that there is a golden rule that must always be followed by boys in short pants. Michael got a little taste yesterday of what happens when that rule is broken, didn't you Michael.'
'Yes, Mother'.
'So what is the golden rule, Michael?'
'I have to keep my socks neatly pulled up all of the time, Mother'.
'Good boy. You will have no excuse either as I have sewn some garters for both of you'. And with that Mum handed a pair of bands made of strong black elastic from her sewing kit to each of us. 'You wear these at the top of your socks and fold your turnovers over them. That way your socks will stay up better at all times.'
Sam was particularly horrified at being given these garters. He hadn't been given his first pair of shorts yet and here he was being handed symbols of the clothes he was going to be made to wear from next week on. He totally flipped his lid at this. His rage just boiled over as he shook the garters in my mother's face and screamed that she was never, never, ever, going to make him wear stupid little sissie shorts.
Dad's response was as swift as it was efficient and before I knew what had happened my thirteen year-old brother was lying across our father's lap and Dad's hand was rising into the air ready to deliver a spanking. And not just any spanking but the very first in Sam's life. To say that I was delighted at this development would be an understatement. Sam had been really mean to me when I was spanked and put into shorts the other day. Well it just seemed to me that he had it coming to him, and as the first solid whack landed on his trouser clad backside it was obvious that he was going to get everything that he deserved.
Sam must have been really shocked by this. Not having had time, even a few seconds, to prepare himself for this, he hadn't steeled his mind for the pain that was about to be inflicted on his thirteen year-old bottom. The sound of Dad's hand smacking into Sam's trousers was pretty amazing. Not so much a 'whack' as a 'whok', and the blows were coming fast and furious.
Whok! Whok! Whok! Whok! Whok! Whok! Whok! Whok!
On and on for what seemed like ages and the noise was made louder by the fact that Sam had only lasted a few seconds before he started bawling. This was incredible and I was really appreciating the scene. The little sod had made sure that I was constantly reminded of just how shaming it was for me to be put into shorts and spanked. Now that he was getting a taste of that medicine I couldn't bring myself to sympathise with him. I just sat there on the floor, hugged my knees into my chest, and gloated.
Whok! Whok! Whok!
Then just as suddenly as he had started Dad stopped, looked over at me, and told me to go and fetch the brush. I didn't need telling twice. I was out the door and up the stairs in a thrice. If anything it now looked as if Sam's first spanking was going to be even more sustained and more painful than mine. Excellent!
I got back down to the sitting room and found that Sam's shoes, trousers, and underpants, had all been stripped off him and he was back over my Dad's lap. I handed the clothesbrush to Dad like an altar boy serving a priest. This was a sacred moment. Those last few seconds between being a boy who was never spanked in his life, to being a boy who, even as a teenager, was going to receive his fist bare bottom spanking. And what a bottom! Even at only thirteen Sam was quite well developed. In fact, if truth be told, he might even have been more physically mature than I was at fifteen. He might have been my brother, and I might never have seen a spanking before, but I could see that his was a bottom that had been made for spanking.
And wow, Dad spared no time now before resuming the ritual.
The dull sound of hand on cloth had now given way to a full and much more satisfactory 'whack'.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
'Don't you ever argue or speak back to your Mother ever again', Dad shouted over the sound of the continuous spanking.
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Sam was absolutely bawling by now. Forget any idea you might have had of a selfconfident, arrogant, teenage boy. This was nothing but a howling toddler lying on his Daddy's knees.
Whack!
It was over. Dad looked exhausted. Sam looked as if he would never recover. And in a way, like anyone who has ever been properly spanked, he never would. From now on he would be a boy who gets spanked.
He stood up shaking and crying, and Mum, Dad, and I, waited while he got his breath back.
'I'm sorry I was cheeky Mum, I'll be good, I promise.'
His first words as a spanked teenager were the contrite words of a punished child. I was delighted at the way he had been humbled. I know I should have felt more sympathy for him but he was a guy who had needed bringing down a peg or two.
And then Dad snapped at me.
'Stand up Michael and take those shorts off now!'
What had I done? I didn't dare ask. If Dad was in the mood for giving out spankings then I wasn't going to provoke him. A day or two ago I would have protested, but not now. I jumped up and took off the grey school shorts that I was wearing, not that they offered much protection or coverage anyway. This was the pair of secret shorts that I had bought last year and kept hidden away, the very pair that had landed me in most of this trouble, and they were quite tight and short on me. I pulled them down along my legs and over my black Clarkes school-shoes, and then looked at Dad to wait for orders about what he wanted me to do next. His words were just as much a surprise as anything else that had been said or done that evening. He simply told me to hand my shorts to Sam, and then he turned to Sam and said, 'Put these short pants on you now. You weren't going to be put into shorts until the Easter holiday started next week, but boys who get spanked in this house, wear shorts'.
Meekly, and still sobbing quietly, Sam pulled on the dreaded and shameful shorts. He didn't even try to get his underpants on first. Some inner voice, perhaps an instinct passed on from previous generations of spanked ancestors, told him that it would be best for him if he simply obeyed every order exactly. Even though Sam was nearly as well developed as me the shorts still looked less tight on him. His fourteenth birthday was only a few weeks away in May whereas I'm a November baby, so there isn't a full two years between us. The shorts he was now wearing were the very ones that I had bought last September and had been my secret shorts, hidden away until only two days ago. The very shorts that had been my downfall. Still, they were a much better fit on Sam than on me, although they were still quite tight and rather short. As he fastened the fly I could almost see the penny drop in his mind, as he realised that not only was he a well-spanked teenage boy. He was also a teenager in grey school-shorts. Life would never be the same for him.
Dad looked over at me and told me to go upstairs and put on the new pair of shorts that he had bought for me at the school outfitters on Thursday afternoon. The pair that he had picked up along with my new school uniform knee-socks. I pulled them on for the first time. They were a bit looser than the other pair, a much better fit. And they were longer too with the hems just a couple of inches above my knees. I checked my knee-socks and then pulled on the new garters my mother had made. As I folded the tops of my socks over the garters I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Gone was the denim-clad youth of last week, and in his place was a much nicer looking boy. A boy any mother would have been proud of, in his very traditional schoolboy garb of blue polo-shirt, grey shorts, and smartly pulled up grey knee-socks. A much more polite looking boy, one of a very rare breed in April 1982; a teenager who was made to wear shorts, even to school. A teenager who came from a family where rules were to be obeyed at all times, and where disobedience was swiftly and firmly punished.
I smiled at the guy in the mirror. It might be a more painful and more humiliating life than the one I had led before, but I kind of liked the new me. He looked like a decent enough kind of a kid. I guessed that he would get lots more spankings but I reckoned that I could live with that.
Then a quite strange thought struck me. I would have died of shame if I had been told to wear these shorts a few days ago. But now, after two days wearing much shorter and tighter short pants, I felt that being allowed longer shorts was a recognition that I was growing up. So I really didn't mind wearing them at all. Mum and Dad seemed to be threatening to keep Sam and I in shorts for a few years yet and that was a frightening thought. But in the meantime, I really liked my new school shorts.
I picked up a pair of knee-socks, brought them downstairs with me, and gave them to Sam. He smiled and thanked me, and I smiled back and told him that he was welcome. Afterall, despite it all, he's my only brother, my not-so-little brother. A boy like me; both of us boys who got spanked.
And boys who get spanked are kept in short pants.
And boys who are kept in short pants have to wear proper knee-socks and keep them pulled up at all times!