I would like, briefly, to to tell you about my own school days. This is not a story of harsh canings and spankings, but I am sticking to the absolute truth! Many writers who claim to be relating their own experiences go on to describe beatings which would have put the perpetrators in jail and the recipients in hospital!
My fascination with bottoms and spankings began at a very early age. I can remember when I was at kindergarten seeing a fellow pupil in a pair of tight fitting short trousers and thinking what a lovely bottom to spank he had got! It was nothing to do with strict parents. Mine could not have been more easy going. The odd smack on the back of my legs when I was really playing up, but I was never spanked as such by my parents.
I remember when I was about five years old two boys who attended the local junior school were caught stealing chocolate from my parents shop. My father reported them to their school. They seemed big boys to me, but in fact they must have been somewhere between seven and ten years old. The next morning their headmaster gave them two strokes of the cane - not, I regret to report on their soft little behinds, but one stroke on each hand - and sent straight away to our shop, both crying, to apologise to my father. Here was the plot for my first story "Thomson the Prefect."
Two years later I started at that very same junior school, the same headmaster still in charge. Anybody sent to the headmaster got exactly the same treatment. Whether it was a serious or trivial offence it was always one stroke on each hand. My last year there, aged ten, was in the headmaster`s class. The thing he was really strict about was talking in class. Even gesticulating to one another was "talking!" One could hear the proverbial pin drop in that classroom, yet even so, every now and then he would shout out - "You two! You are talking! Come here!" There was no pleading, no denying the offence! Nobody dare! I never tasted that cane, there was nothing I wanted to say that could not wait until break time!
At the age of eleven I was sent to what in the UK we rather curiously call a public school (It has just the opposite meaning in America. In Britain a public school is a private fee-paying boarding school, although I attended as a day boy). In those days such schools had a reputation of very strict discipline. Up to two terms before I arrived it fitted very much into that category. Apparently the headmaster was something of a sadist. He would cane five or six boys a day for the most trivial reasons. I was told that one small boy got six of the best because the tag on his overcoat snapped and his coat fell off the hook and onto the floor!
But that headmaster had gone. his replacement was a bachelor who seemed very young for a headmaster. I doubt whether he had reached forty, he was handsome, athletic (if he organised a cross-country run he would go on it!), and a superb swimmer. He would have made a good James Bond, he was that type! Unlike most headmasters he was approachable, he would listen to our excuses and often give us the benefit of the doubt! He allowed nobody other than himself to administer corporal punishments. It was always the slipper or his hand, he never used a cane.
He occasionally spanked boys in front of the class. He would always use the same words - "Come here and be spanked!" The boy would be ordered to bend over and then the headmaster would give him usually three, but sometimes four, spanks. It may not sound much but he could really hit hard! I know! I was once one of the victims! However, most of the boys could take it without much trouble, I only remember two being reduced to tears. In the privacy of his study he would use the slipper, sometimes over the trousers and sometimes on the bare bottom.
So where do I come into this? Being absolutely honest I have to admit that I only got my bottom warmed up twice during the six years I was at the school, After a couple of years when I had worked well, I became thoroughly lazy and lost all interest in learning. At the end of each term the headmaster would go through our reports with each of us in private. On one such occasion he told me that if my work did not improve in the first three weeks of the next term he would give me the slipper! I suppose I was lucky not to get it there and then, the end of term was the busiest time for his slipper! Somehow I just could not pull myself up the next term and my work did not improve. When the three weeks were up he told me to report to him after school! It was a strange feeling wondering how I was going to take it. Even before I was ordered to bend over an armchair I got a sensation of pins and needles in my bottom in anticipation of what was to come! I got six strokes. It was getting very uncomfortable by the sixth stroke but I took it without moving or flinching. I never feared the slipper after that, but it had the desired effect and I began working hard again. Why? Because the headmaster told me that the next time it would be with my trousers off! The mere thought of the humiliation of baring my bottom and bending over that chair did the trick!
The other occasion was during the same term. I had got something wrong during a Latin lesson. Latin was the headmaster`s subject. I got the usual call - "Come here and be spanked!" I got three, strangely three spanks with his hand hurt more than the first three with the slipper!
There was one other occurrence which stands out in my memory. It happened to a friend of mine. I will call him Fred Steavens. There were three of us who were close friends, spending much of our time together both in and out of school. One afternoon there was a training session for the forthcoming school sports. Those of us who had not been picked for the sports had to attend and do a bit of "do as you please training." (Sounds familiar? This was the real life plot for my story "Thomson and the Stinging Nettles!").
It was wintertime and we could come to the sports field dressed as we like. Fred was wearing a pair of thick corduroy trousers. He also had a sheath on his belt with a throwing knife in it. That alone would get some horrified looks today! In those days it was not unusual for boys to carry throwing knives, nobody even dreamt of using them for any illegal purpose! It just goes to show how our society has changed! At one point during the afternoon Fred started throwing the knife at the wall of an old wooden shed on the edge of the sports field. Suddenly we heard a voice yell out - "Stevens!" It was the headmaster!
My other friend and myself immediately made ourselves scarce and started trotting round the field! We saw Fred being taken into the sports equipment store. After three laps which took us about half an hour we found Fred sitting on a bench. We joined him and he told us what had happened. After the expected lecture the headmaster said he would confiscate the knife until the end of term (Fred did get it back!) and then he said - "And now I am going to spank you! Are you wearing anything underneath those trousers?"
"No sir!" replied Fred.
"Well I am afraid I cannot spank you over those thick trousers! Take them off!"
Fred told us that he removed his trousers and was put across the headmasters knees. He felt his shirt tail being pulled back and then WHACK! He got four whacks! Unfortunately Fred never gave us any more details except to say - "It didn`t half hurt!" so I have no idea how he reacted to it
I did see, one day, some boys stinging prep form boys on their legs with stinging nettles, but they did not get caught at it! I combined this with the Fred episode for my story - "Thomson and the Stinging Nettles."
Just as the headmaster had arrived at the school two terms before I did, so, by coincidence, he left to take up another appointment two terms after I left. I still had friends at the school who I would meet up with occasionally. One of them told me that the new headmaster was also a slipper man! Apparently his favourite method of punishment was to take the offending boy into the bathroom, order him to take down his trousers and briefs and bend over into the bath! Then the headmaster would dip the slipper into the hand basin full of water and whack the boy with the wet slipper! I would imagine that must have hurt a bit!
You may wonder whether I have ever done any spanking myself! The answer is yes, but only in consensual fun, so there is no point in going into that!
I have fond memories of the headmaster. He was always fair and kept order without leaving anybody unable to sit down for a week! I am forever grateful for the slippering and the spanking which I got! Not only did I deserve them but without them I would never have known what a spanking was like! For an English public school, in those days, the corporal punishments were comparatively mild, and in fact the discipline at the state junior school had been far more strict!
Well, that`s about it. I am sorry if it has not been all that exciting, but at least it is the absolute truth!