Who has not said to himself that what some misbehaving child needs is a good sound spanking? Although older children are usually thought to have outgrown the need for physical punishment, there are many teenagers and even some young men who remain woefully undisciplined. In such a case, the youth may sometimes show surprising self-comprehension, recognizing that he still needs parental discipline, almost craving it.
Consider a young man of 18 or 19 years, home from University for Xmas vacation, flaunting his new-found independence. His parents become increasingly exasperated. Finally, there occurs some incident of flagrant disobedience, such as failing to get the required permission before driving off in the family car. This brings matters to a head. In the TV room, perhaps during a commercial break on the TV, his mother suddenly points to the young man and announces for all to hear: "That boy is out of control. What he needs is a good sound spanking!" If a sister happens to be present, she may chime in maliciously: "Yes, Daddy, hes been itching for a spanking ever since he came home from college." This tells us that the young lady has long been immune to assaults from a disciplining hand. The discreet silence of a brother in these circumstances testifies to his own, still vulnerable status.
And how does the young man himself feel in such circumstances? Surprisingly, a spanking may be just what he has secretly desired. He knows his mother is right, but is profoundly embarrassed to have his need for a spanking asserted so openly. His father must have been aware, already, of his sons flagrant misbehaviors. Now, goaded by his wife, he resolves to take the young man in hand.
The young man is now instructed, in a firm tone that brooks no opposition, to get into his bathrobe, and oh yes, to bring the strap when he returns. If spanking has been a favored method of discipline in this household, no further instructions should be necessary; in particular, there need be no reminder that his bottom must be fully bared under the robe. His face flushing with embarrassment, the young man bows his head submissively and retreats to his bedroom. Imagine his feelings as he climbs out of his trousers and briefs, leaving his private areas completely naked! He had been thinking of himself as all grown up, and yet he is now to be spanked on his bare nates like a naughty child! It is hard for him to believe that he is actually readying himself for such a humiliating and painful experience. Hands quivering with agitation, he dons his bathrobe and then obediently fetches the dreaded strap from his parents bedroom. Testing the straps flexibility by slapping it against his open palm, he feels weak from the excruciating mixture of fear and shame. At the same time, he feels deliciously alive, almost uncontrollably excited. Noticing in his parents full-length mirror that there is a prominent tenting of his robe, he clutches the overlapping folds in front to try to hide his emotional condition.
Returning to the TV room, his eyes now brimming with tears, the young man meekly hands this familiar instrument of punishment to his father who, without comment, takes him by the ear and marches him to whatever place spankings are customarily administered in this home. This might be in the basement from which the sounds attendant to serious punishment are less likely to be heard by neighbors (who might affect to be indignant to learn that spankings are still being applied to grownup offspring...and right next door!). If there is no basement, a separate room, as isolated from neighbors as possible, should be used. The revealing sounds will not be masked by the TV, for the set is likely to be turned off as soon as the father has led his son away: no one else in the family wants to be deprived of their vicarious participation in a performance so much more dramatic than anything on TV. However, other members of the family should not be permitted to view the spanking directly; overly moved by her sons cries for mercy, the mother might truncate the procedure before its lesson has been fully imparted; a sister might become so aroused by what she is observing that she begins to crave similar attention for herself.
The actual spanking room should afford a solid but armless straight-backed chair on which the father can be seated comfortably while administering the needed correction. A low footstool allows a parental knee to be raised. This helps elevate the young mans bottom, especially if he is to be positioned directly over either knee. One advantage of using the left knee as the center of support is that the culprits left leg can be pinioned by his fathers right leg; this also serves to separate the young mans thighs and buttocks, exposing the most sensitive area. However, experience has apparently taught most parents to favor the over-the-lap position in which the offending bottom can be elevated above the spankers right thigh or knee with both legs dangling down to the right. What is crucial is that the bottom be as high and as far forward (i. e., to the left) as possible, with maximum accessibility to the target area. The strap will have been placed close at hand, readily accessible for spanking without the father having to loosen his grip around the miscreants waist.
Consider what thoughts race through the young mans mind as he is ignominiously guided, bottom up, across the parental knee! He knows that he is being treated like a naughty child, no differently than when he was 10. He knows that his bottom will soon be bared and that he will be dissolving in tears like any naughty child about to be spanked. But at this point, there is no thought of resisting: deep down, the lad is overcome by his own sense of utter humiliation. He knows that he needs a spanking and is almost eager for the proceedings to begin. Nevertheless, he begins to whimper at the culminating moment of this gallingly slow preparation, when the skirt of his robe is finally lifted, fully exposing still-white buttocks (without disturbing the front of the robe which provides a protective separation between the young mans genitals and his fathers pant leg). The charmingly impudent firmness of the youthful gluteal muscles, firmly rounded by years of bicycling, provides an aesthetically pleasing surprise. Indeed, this bottom is fairly begging to be smacked. Disregarding habitual norms of privacy, the father may insert his spanking hand between his sons extreme upper thighs, pulling up between the bottom cheeks, positioning them for maximum exposure.
The father begins with light spanks delivered by bare hand. Only later will the strap be brought into play. At this early stage of the spanking, the tips of the spanking fingers might be landing on the so-called "sweet spot" which separates anus from genitalia. When applied so directly to this area, the bare hand is a more accurate instrument than the strap. If the spanks succeed each other in an even cadence, the buttocks will begin to bounce, rising eagerly to meet each spank as it descends. The target area, densely packed with free nerve endings and in such close proximity to the genitalia, becomes increasingly flushed so that his own rampant hormones take frenzied charge of the young mans will. Although he already may be crying like a child, he is unlikely to be conscious of any real physical pain at this time; _s_e_x_ual release, brought on by the concentrated physical stimulation and by the completely mortifying humiliation, marks a coda to these preliminaries.
And what has the young man learned during this opening act of the drama? The answer is simple: humility! For millennia, novitiates have bared their naked buttocks to birches, straps, even whips—the amazingly effective teachers of humility. The humble monk is the product of a determined course of training designed to strip him of the arrogant pride manifest by so many young men.
Now the real spanking must begin! The spanks become much harder. The young man becomes painfully aware of an awful stinging in his lower buttocks, just above where they meet his thighs. These centers of special attention join the normally inaccessible "sweet spot" in what is fast developing into a boiling cauldron of agony. The pain quickly becomes unbearable, and the buttocks twist and squirm in their futile effort to shift the target. Reflexively, the culprits right hand flies back to protect these nether regions. The father will know to grab the wrist of the intruding hand, twisting it up into the small of the young mans back and thereby establishing complete mastery. Realizing this, the young man bursts into a fresh flow of tears, weeping helplessly, crying like a child. He may protest that the spanks hurt too much to bear, make ridiculous promises to behave, even proffer pitifully sincere assurances that he has truly learned his lesson. These pleas will of course be discounted as transparent attempts to end the pain prematurely, before the lesson has been fully learned. To discourage such unseemly displays, the spanking should actually be intensified at this point. The father thus demonstrates to his willful son that pain, unbearable pain, will continue to be the unavoidable consequence of disobedience. Indeed, now might be the time to reach for the strap!
The effectiveness of a strap depends as much upon its physical properties as on the forcefulness with which it is applied. Here, history has awarded first place to the Scottish tawse. Generations of young Scots have learned to dread the Draconian effects of the tawse. The exquisite painfulness of this instrument for spanking is due in part to its traditional thickness and weight, in part to the tails that have often been cut several inches into its flailing end. Properly directed, the tawse can encircle a lower nate, its tails flicking cruelly into the particularly tender sweet spot. The mere sight of the family tawse hanging prominently on a kitchen wall is said to have insured a level of obedience that would astound modern parents. But these tails, curling down the nether spheres of the buttocks, can also leave dreadful welts, a welting that modern parents might not wish to inflict. A plain strap, not too long but sufficiently flexible to produce a shocking sting, is normally quite sufficient; even a flexible leather slipper can be marvelously effective, and its peculiar pain can be delivered with greater accuracy than a flailing strap (care must be taken not to strike the scrotum). Both of these instruments are really only extensions of the parental hand, increasing its lever arm and thus giving greater force to the swing. But again, a sound spanking administered with the bare hand can often impart a sufficiently salutary lesson.
As leather strikes again and again into the most sensitive parts, with ever increasing force, the young mans cries will now give expression to raw, panicked fear. He realizes that he has lost all control, and his howling testifies that he is receiving a licking of magisterial proportions. These anguished screams will not be lost on the subdued audience back in the TV room. A brother might grin scornfully while listening to this "infantile bawling," but deep down he knows that he would be howling with just as much abandon if he were getting the strap himself. A sister might be having regrets that she was so quick to endorse her mothers suggestion that her big brother be spanked, and the mother herself might be regretting her role in instigating the resort to physical chastisement.
When the father judges that the lesson has been sufficiently well learned, the spanking stops. The young man continues to sob uncontrollably while still held in spankable position over his fathers knee. Now is the time for an affectionately comforting kneading of the painfully swollen buttocks, signaling that the lesson is truly over, that the young man is still loved. Finally, he is allowed to slide to the floor where he remains kneeling, weeping into his folded arms, his burning bottom still elevated in the classic pose of submission assumed by different mammalian species. The father will now return to the TV room and the anxious looks of the assembled family. He will spare them the titillating details of the spanking, contenting himself with some offhand understatement, such as: "I think he has learned his lesson."
Eventually, the young man will make his own shameful return, his eyes red, his tear-stained cheeks puffed from crying. He will again be clutching the front of his robe, bunching it up to hide this time any revealing discoloration. He will not tarry, instead hurrying abashedly to his room, there to throw himself face down on the bed, his bottom bared in the vain hope of cooling his burning nates. Mother will soon enter his room, a bottle of soothing lotion in hand. She will be shocked by the intensely crimsoned state of her sons inflamed buttocks, also by any bruising, however slight. Gently applying the lotion, she cannot resist reminding him that he had brought it on himself. "Why cant you behave? Imagine a big boy of your age still having to be spanked!" Before leaving, she might end her ministrations with a smart spank on each of the offending buttocks, as though to remind her son that she can herself instigate a spanking and that he had better remember that.
The young mans night is apt to be feverish, fitful. His hormones might well act up again, and more than once, but eventually he will drift into the restorative sleep of the exhausted. In the morning, he will find a soft cushion on his chair at the breakfast table. Curious eyes will watch for the grimace of pain that he will try to suppress as he gingerly lowers himself onto the cushion. Good-natured chuckles will greet his discomfiture, and the somber silence induced by the sheer enormity of the previous nights drama will be transformed into the sympathetic warmth of a caring family.
For the next two or three days, the tenderness of his lower bottom will remind the young man, each time he sits down or eases onto the protruding tongue of his bicycle seat, that he is still subject to parental discipline, that open disobedience is likely to earn him another spanking. Before he returns to college, his father may invite him for a long walk. The young man might be asked whether he harbors any bitterness about being spanked. His answer is likely to be heartfelt and reassuring: "No Dad, I got exactly what I deserved. I was really getting out of hand, wasting my energy testing the limits. I actually feel better now that you have reminded me so forcibly that I still have to behave. It feels good to know my parents care enough to take me in hand when a good sound spanking is needed."
Back at college, the young man will reap the benefits of his disciplining. He will apply himself to his studies, even taking his after-class job so much more seriously that the manager asks what could have happened over vacation. If the manager only knew!
This new measure of self-discipline may prove to be of limited duration. Gradually, he may fall back into to his undisciplined ways, unable to study, skipping classes, late for work. Not that he cannot grasp what is happening, that he is depressed by his own irresponsibility. He wishes that there were some older man who would take him in hand, perhaps a professor to whom he could apply for an instructive session of serious physical chastisement. When he finally returns home for the summer, it will have been almost six months since his last spanking. His parents will not fail to note that he is once again getting out of hand. A good sound spanking is again in order! This resort to old-fashioned discipline should not be delayed. If the family is to enjoy a pleasant summer, he must again be sent to his room, there to prepare himself for another spanking.
No one need think that this regression to his old ways is a sign that the previous punishment had not been sufficiently severe. Most boys need to be spanked occasionally. With some boys, spankings continue to be needed, even after they reach young manhood.