My friend Sid was exceptional in junior high school. For one thing, few of our parents used spanking except as a last resort. When my brother ran away from home at age 13, my father drove the streets until he found him. Then he brought him home and gave him a very hard over-the-knee hand spanking. That was unusual and an example of a very rare occasion.
But Sid got spanked all the time. With a stick, or with a belt, on the bare butt. He caused a lot of trouble at home, and was punished for it frequently. In fact, at school too, he seemed to delight in angering some of the male teachers, taunting them until he got a good hard swat.
Another way Sid was unusual was that his family was poor. He parents could not buy him clothes. So he had to work in junior high school in order to have clothes to wear. Many of us boys worked. I had a paper route after school, my brother worked cleaning up a butcher shop after school. But our parents forced us to put most of the money in the bank, to teach us "The Value of Saving". What little we were allowed to keep was for recreation, and was in addition to the regular cash allowance of pocket money that our parents always gave us. With almost all of my friends it was that way. But Sid really needed that money.
Sid was unusual in another way, and that one was really nice. Sid's family lived in a very small house, but it was on a large lot. So Sid's father had fixed up a shed in the back for Sid to live in. Maybe it was partly because they fought so much that Sid's father just wanted him out of the house as much as possible. I think Sid went into his house just to eat meals. Lots of privacy, no interference. Sid could play the radio as loud as he wanted, and nobody would tell him to turn it down. He could have his friends in and they could make as much noise as they wanted, which was really nice.
Sid went to a different high school than I did, so I hardly saw him after junior high.
But one day I ran into him and he told me a fabulous story. In the tenth grade Sid and his friend Hank used to hang around together all the time. They were a curious couple, as Sid was average in height for a 15 year old, but Hank was as tall as an adult. A sort of Mutt and Jeff pair. Sid had a great sense of humor, and was liked by everybody. So did Hank. So they had a great time together, dating girls, and going to sports activities, and hanging around, playing all kinds of tricks and just having a great time.
There was another boy, let's call him Jack, who was a kind of loner who really admired Sid and Hank. One day he came to them and asked if he could hang around with them. He saw what a great time they had, and he wanted to be a part of it. Sid and Hank talked about it, and made Jack an offer. He could join them, but he would have to do anything they told him to do. There would be an initiation period of a few months in which Jack would be swatted regularly. If he ever refused to take a swat, or do anything else that he was told to do, he would be dropped. Even after he had passed the initiation period, they could still swat him anytime he did something they didn't like. Would he accept those conditions? "Yes," Jack said, "I'll do anything you say if I can hang around with you."
So Sid and Hank made a paddle from a baseball bat. The sliced the bat lengthwise, cutting off part of one long, round side. They sanded that cut side flat and the result was a special baseball bat with one flat side and one round side. And it was the flat side they hit Jack with. Whenever Jack came over to Sid's little house, the first thing he had to do was strip naked. Then he bent over and got some swats. Whatever they did together in that little house during Jack's initiation period, whether it was to listen to music, or to tell stories, or even to do homework together, Jack was naked. And whenever Sid or Hank felt like it, Jack had to bend over and got swatted.
What a paddle that baseball bat was! Boy did that hurt.