HUMILIATION OF SHORT TROUSERS
There is an increasing realisation of the feelings of acute shame and embarrassment undergone by leggy teenage boys when forced to wear little boy's grey 'knickers', and how they find it particularly mortifying to be actually put back into their old short trousers when they I are fifteen and sixteen, and made, once again, to parade their smooth bare legs that show just how juvenile they really are. It would seem to me, therefore, that this humiliation felt by such big boys when compelled to exhibit their naked legs, should be used to combat the growing problems of teenage indiscipline and rebellion, and wise parents should not only make much more frequent use of cane, strap and birch across their sons' big bare bottoms, but should have ready for immediate use some pairs of conspicuously coloured turndown stockings. I feel that I can argue from a position of strength as I was most righteously whipped by both my parents until well into my late teens, and had to remain in very short trousers until after I had left Grammar School at eighteen.
My own parents may well have been too strict, and there is no doubt that my bare backside experienced the 'fire' of the tawse, when I was sixteen and seventeen, for faults that today would pass without comment in the average home. Is there a lad of seventeen today that would have to remove completely his short trousers and underpants, have his shirttail tucked in his collar, and bend tightly across the back of a chair, to get a good old-fashioned tanning for swearing?? I got just such a tanning when I was seventeen, and just for saying '_d_a_m_n_' while playing a game of ludo at our Box-ing Day party; and there was no question of being sent upstairs or of being whipped after my cousins, uncles and aunts had gone, I got my punishment on my bare behind in front of everyone.
Zealous to a degree, my parents were determined that not only should I do well at school, but that I should grow up well mannered and considerate, and resolved that I should have no false ideas that the world revolved around 'me'. If I showed the least sign of getting above my-self I would be sent to fetch the tawse, and while quoting Ecclesiastes 'Woe to thee, 0 land, when thy king is a child' either my mother or my father would strenuously whip my broad bare bottom, until I was a very sore 'king' indeed, and they would continue to apply the tawse until my yelps and then my tears had utterly deflated my teenage ego, and I knew I was neither 'prince' nor 'freeman', but only a big, crestfallen, boy still very much 'under my parents' rod'.
Although I was forced to wear short trousers until eighteen, I do not think that my parents made me show my big bare legs as a punishment. They just considered that while a boy was at school he should wear school uniform, but long trousers they considered an adult privilege, and anyway they were uneconomical. I do not think, also, that my mother bought me the shortest possible boys' knickers when I was younger, or lopped so much off the larger sizes when I was older, in order to humiliate me by leaving my legs completely exposed. Both my father and my mother believed that free access to the bare 'limbs' of sun and air was both healthy and strengthening, and, accordingly, my mother first cut away most of the legs of my shorts, and then hemmed them neatly to about an inch below the fly, so as the sun and air could do its wholesome work to every square-inch of my long naked legs and thighs, and even at eighteen she saw to it that I wore ankle socks in summer; knitting them herself, and carefully introducing my school colours of red and yellow into bands round the tops, and these had to be neatly turned down just above my sensible black shoes. As I said, my parents did not look upon the wearing of these brief short trousers throughout my teens as a punishment, but I can tell you here and now that the constant public humiliation of being unable to do anything but show my entirely bare legs was far vorse than the humiliation of a whipping.
Without any doubt I found my whippings less of an embarrassment than the enforced wearing of my ridiculous short trousers. Although my father and my mother made no bones about giving me a good whipping in front of other people, yet I only had to take my short trousers and underpants down at home, or when staying with relatives. As most of the family had either seen me whipped before, or at least knew that my parents believed in whipping me, big as I was, the punishments were something that I had grown to accept, and it was only two or three times while on holiday that I knew the particular shame of complete strangers either seeing or hearing my father apply himself to my bare bottom with the tawse. By and large my whippings were a private humiliation, very much within the family, but the skimpy short grey trousers that I had to wear as a tall teenage boy, made me a figure of public ridicule and were a constant humiliation.
How clearly I can remember wishing desperately, when I was about fifteen, that I might stop growing, or that I hadn't such long legs, or that I might start growing hairs on my legs. I felt, somehow, that if I stopped growing I might pass as a leggy thirteen year old, in spite of the very clear signs of my _s_e_x_ual development bulging so prominently against the tight worsted at the front of my shorts. I thought, too, that if I had hairs on my legs, the boys at school might think me more tough, or at least cease finding me so girlish. Yet I grew taller and taller, and my legs longer and longer, and everyday my shorts were shorter and tighter. Not one hair ap-peared anywhere on the smooth, glossy, skin of my sun-tanned legs and thighs, so the boys at school teased me more and more, and made up to me as if I was a girl. When I reached the Sixth form and no long trousers were forthcoming, and I turned up at sixteen in my new Sixth Form blazer and spanking new little short trousers and in three-quarter stockings knitted by my mother with the Sixth Form colours of yellow and black in bands turned down well below my big bare knees, there were hoots of derision, and I had to endure all kinds of abuse for the next two years. Groups of young boys, and certain big boys, would gang up on me, and stroke my legs and argue whether I had prettier legs than this or that girl, and then they would often feel up the abbreviated leg of my short trousers and get me erected and laugh at the sight of my _s_e_x_ that was barely capable of being contained in my little pants, and finally they would pull my erected penis out from under my shorts and hold it against my thigh, and mark round it with ink on my bare thigh and make me leave the outline on my leg so as they could see how far it would stick out below the hem of my shorts.
It was not only at school that I was an object of either ridicule or interest. Everywhere in public I was observed or commented upon. I think I hated most sitting down in trains, buses or trains, particularly when the seats faced one another. The act of sitting down in my tiny shorts caused the fly to puli apart and show the buttons, the front to show even more clearly the conspicuous contours of my _s_e_x_, and the legs to ride up and show narrow bands of pale skin at the very tops of my thighs. At such times the great bare 'bars' of my thighs seemed to be thrust before everyone's gaze. Worst of all was the fact that my prominent bare legs were readily available for a good slapping. If I did not stand up quickly enough and offer my seat toa lady on a bus or tram, a resounding slap from my father or mother would have me up in a moment, blushing to the roots of my hair and feeling the hand-mark rise up and form a red mark on the front of my thigh. Every Saturday afternoon I had to meet my father for one of his improving trips to Museums or Art Galleries. I was usually on time, but if I was late I knew he would take me by the seat of my shorts, tug them well up, and give the hacks of my thighs and knees a good slapping, and a highly amused audience would see me walk away with my father with red hand-marks from the hem of my shorts to the tops of my turn-down stockings. If I had been a boy of six it would have been embarrassing, but to be hand-smacked on the back of my legs at sixteen and seventeen was terribly shaming.
I think the worst of all these frequent public leg-slappings was when I was seventeen, just after my father had been put in charge of the junior class at Sunday School. My father took me out of the Senior Class to help with the seven to ten year olds. Of all days Sunday was a day of complete humiliation for me. I still wore a tweed short-trousered suit that had been bought for me when I was fourteen. The jacket was too small and the short trousers were as brief and tight as swim-ming trunks and were held tight on my hips by unyielding braces that had to be worn with a suit. To cap it all I always had to wear ankle socks of white or fawn with this outgrown suit. As I sat in the circle of young girls and boys, all bored to tears by my father's endless homilies, I would look down with shame at the seemingly endless expanse of my own bare legs, and at the ob-scene bulge at the front of my shorts, and my hairless, fleshy thighs protruding from the constricting leg of the brown herring-bone shorts. All around me were little boys of ten in long trousers or with knees just peeping from over-long shorts, and little girls whose knees were demurely cover-ed by their long dresses.
While waiting for my father I was always teased by the children and called all sorts of names like 'nappie-pants' and 'girlie-long-legs', and while sitting in the circle I could feel all the children's eyes feast-ing on my embarrassment, and the boys opposite to me would shift their eyes along my bare legs and move their head to see if my shorts had been forced up past the sides of my buttocks as I sat down. One Sunday, before father arrived, I found this teasing beyond endurance and I smacked the head of one of the most objectionable boys. He just howled, and my sixfoot father came rushing in. He was terribly angry, and when he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck I thought that my shorts were going to come down for certain. Perhaps it might have been less humiliating if he had taken my pants down and spanked me, at least it would have seemed a punishment more in keeping for a boy of seventeen.
As it was he planted himself on a chair, pushed me across his knees, threw back my jacket and grabbed the waistband of my shorts. As he heaved the waist-band of my shorts up my back I felt the seam cut in between my legs, hut did not realise, until the first slap, just how far the legs of my shorts were pulled up. Down came his big hand across the lower half of my bottom, and there was no muffled smack of his hand hitting the seat of my trousers. Instead there was the clear smack of his hand hitting bare skin and the immediate sting of a barebottom smacking, and I knew that he must have tugged up my shorts past the cheeks of my bottom. Hard slap followed hard slap, all in the same place, and I felt the lower half of my buttocks blazing and stinging. Still my father spanked me and the slaps were now on alternate thighs, and on and on he smacked until he was reaching right over me and delivered sharp slaps to the backs of my broad bare knees. It may not have hurt like the tawse, but the awful humiliation of being smacked at seventeen before all those children, and the endless succession of slaps as he worked hack up my thighs and was smacking me once again on my partly exposed bottom, caused me to break down completely.
When he stopped suddenly in the midst of my sobbing I thought that he had relented and was going to let me get up from across his knees, hut not a bit of it. While saying that the children were going to see me get a smacking to remember, he took hold of each leg of my short trou-sers and tugged up first one side and then the other, thus laying bare the yet unspanked flesh of my big bottom and proceeded to smack me vigorously once again, first on the fresh bare skin presented to him and then once again down the smarting backs of my quivering naked thighs. It was then that I cried like a little boy, and the only sounds in that room were the regular slap, slap, slap, slap of my father's hand on the juddering flesh of my seventeen year old bot-tom and legs, and the muffled sobs that came from under the jacket hanging over my drooping head.
After an eternity of hard, blistering smacks, my father delivered two final slaps to the middle of my scarlet bottom, and ordered me to get up from across his knees, and to go and stand in the corner, face towards the wall. Before all the children, standing in open-mouthed amazement, I shambled in silence to the far corner of the room, and stood facing the wall, sore and dishevelled, my tiny, brown, herring-bone short trousers still right up above the naked, boiling, crimson mounds of my soundly smacked buttocks. There I stood, sobbing quietly, and reaching back with my hands to try and push down the legs of my shorts. Even as I put my hands round my bare flanks, I felt the heat from the furrowed skin of my exposed bottom, but before 1 could pull down the legs of my shorts, and cover up some of my shame, there was a sharp command from my father 'leave your trousers be, and stand to attention with your hands on your head'.
I had no choice, and stood for the next half-hour, my hands on my head, my bare legs together, while father talked in his crisp voice to the children, who were listening less than ever, and ogling my cherryripe bare backside and the jerking length of my well smacked legs.
Thus, while I would never advocate the laying aside of the cane, or the tawse, or the birch, I would strongly advise all parents of big teenage boys to con-sider punishing minor disobedience or childish misbehaviour by putting their sons back into brief, grey short trousers, and making them wear again three-quarter stockings turned down over garters. The short trousers would be worn for a stated period, say a week or a fortnight, and during that time the boy must wear his shorts at all times during the day, both at home and to school. During his time in shorts I would suggest that any sign of rebellion, care-lessness or had manners be. immediately rewarded with a thorough smacking on his bare thighs and legs, and they should not hesitate to do this in public if necessary. Short trousers, also, might be used in association with corporal punishment. They would be a badge of ignominy, and the boy made to put shorts on immediately after a whipping. By this method any big boy seen in short trousers would be recognised as a boy who had been recently whipped, and he should be forced to remain in his short trousers until the stripes on his bottom had faded. For, whatever may be said about a whipping, I know that the pain and the humiliation are fairly soon over, but I also know that the shame of being put back into short trousers, the embarrassment of being teased about bare legs, and the humiliation of everyone knowing that one has been recently whipped, are far worse punishments than the actual thrashing, and affect a boy much longer than the cut of the cane or the bite of the tawse.