Having gone too far early in my thirteenth year, my father said to me “You are going to make yourself a paddle.” Under his watchful eye there began 4 inches by 14 inches of rough spanking wood including the handle. Following his masterful direction there finished a powerful work of polished spanking art. When not being thoroughly applied to the bare bottom of a completely naked recipient, it remained on the hook over my bed. The paddle entered the lives of my brothers and sisters when they reached their teens and only exited mine during the last year of college. This is the story of that paddle.

My teen years were regulated by a knotty pine paddle hanging on a knotty pine wall. My own kids now know that same paddle well, and I am sure that it will be known by future generations. This is the story of that paddle.

My bedroom was the wonder of all my friends. That room was built by my father and me in the basement of our house. It was living space that was made necessary when my youngest brother was born, and we were suddenly fresh out of bedrooms. Back then, paneling was not the paper thin stuff you see in Home Depot today. My walls were paneled with knotty pine; real tongue-and-groove boards six inches wide and a half inch thick; boards that we had to spend hours sanding and shellacking after we had nailed them in place. The effect was cozy and manly, sort of like a hunting lodge. My father and I spent many happy hours together working on that room. My room had many advantages; because it was so close to the furnace, it was the warmest room of the house in the winter. Because it was in the basement, it was the coolest room of the house in the summer (this was before ordinary houses had air conditioning). Also, because it was down in the basement, it was the most private room in the house.

My father and I had a very special relationship. My father always professed to love all of his kids equally, but the simple fact was that my father and I were special pals who loved to work together for hours at a time in our basement shop. Was our closeness because of the hours we spent working together on that room and other projects, or did my father build me that wonderful haven simply because we were pals? I have never figured it out. Working on that room was an important part of my education; I grew in that room, in more ways than one. I certainly grew as a craftsman; if you look at those knotty pine walls, you will see dents in the beginnings of the east wall where we started construction. My father must have winced and gritted his teeth every time I missed a nail with the hammer and dented our beautiful wall, but if you look at the north wall where we finished, you will find it almost flawless. It is flawless because my father managed to gently convey some of his skills, talents, and values to his son…me, as I learned to reliably hit the nail and not the wall. I learned other lessons in that room from my loving father, but for a few of them I was required to lay bare-assed across his lap.

My room was never quite done, we made changes and embellishments as fast as my father and I could dream them up. It had built-in furniture that left me extra space in the room and was made just for me and my possessions. There was a model train set that climbed a real grade up and over my bookshelf and then down under my bunk bed and finally out a tiny hole in the wall to take a lap around the basement wall and then chug back into my room though another wall where it traveled under the high casement windows that allowed sunlight into my tiny, cozy, knotty pine world. Because this was the early 60’s, my room had neither a phone nor a TV. It did, however, sport a big old radio that was once the only entertainment for our family, but been banished to the basement when we finally got a TV (it had a tiny black & white screen) installed in our living room. Like everything else in my room, my father and I tinkered together with that radio replacing tubes until we finally made it work. I was the only person in the house with my own radio. It made little difference that I could only get two stations on it down in that basement, all of my friends were amazed that I could listen to the latest music whenever I so desired.

My room occupied one whole end of the basement. The rest of the basement was shared by the laundry, my father’s workshop, a huge furnace, and the stairway. At the landing at the top of the stairway, one could proceed directly out the side door of the house, or turn left to enter the house proper. The effect was like having my own private entrance. It was the siren call of that nearly-private entrance that first caused my bare bottom to feel the sting of a paddle, but I am getting ahead of myself.

That wonderful relationship that I had with my father granted my young bottom no special protection from normal household discipline, in fact, just the opposite; my father took my occasional childish misbehaviors very personally and he seemed to feel a special need to correct them vigorously. Also, he probably felt a need to prove to my sister and brothers (and perhaps him) that our closeness granted me no special privileges. When the time came for my corporal corrections, my father played no favorites. No matter my age, my father’s spankings always continued until I lost all shred of dignity and he had no doubt that my brain had lost all resistance to embracing whatever lesson he was trying to convey. Today, the spankings I received in my youth might be considered rather severe, but in the 60’s they were considered just good parenting. I should also add that, my father always backed up my mother. If she sentenced me to a spanking and did not do the honors herself, my father invariably delivered whatever punishment mom prescribed without argument. While he usually spanked my younger siblings in their bedrooms, he always took me downstairs for my spankings, even before I had a bedroom down there. Perhaps it was a “man thing” or perhaps he just thought I should be entitled to an extra bit of privacy since I was the oldest child.

When one of us was being spanked, Mom would always gather the rest of us in the living room (the room that was farthest from the bedrooms where most spankings took place) and carefully explained to all of us exactly why our brother or sister was being punished, and tell us what we could do to avoid the same for ourselves. Although it wasn’t exactly intended, we could often hear the actual spanks over our mom’s lecture, quickly followed by our sibling’s desperate, anguished vocalizations as he or she learned a hard lesson across my father’s lap. Dad’s first spanks were usually rather light, just making us squirm at first as the heat gradually built. Finally he would deliver a flurry of real stingers to our bare bottoms and we would begin to give voice to our feelings. It was usually these “stingers” that we first heard in the living room, quickly followed by the voice of the person being spanked.

With my sister it was always different. She just reacted to spankings a lot differently than us boys. We could always hear her voice long before her spanking actually started. In fact, we could follow the entire procedure as she protested, negotiated, and wailed her way through every step. We knew exactly when she finally gave up an removed her skirt or pants, we knew when she finally stopped arguing and removed her panties, and we knew exactly when she went across my father’s lap, because that is when she started crying as if she were already being spanked. Because my sister seemed to concentrate on the actual spanking rather than the REASON for the spanking, she never seemed to profit from them and she unfortunately ended up receiving more of them than the rest of us. I am sure that my parents should have tried some other technique out on her, but they firmly believed that treating their children differently would be somehow unfair, so her mostly-futile spankings continued unabated. While she did not seem to be able to learn from a simple thing like a spanking, my sister was not dumb, just different. Today she is our family’s only PhD.

While my mother made it clear that she agreed with the spankings, and often was the parent who actually sentenced us to be spanked, I often saw a tear in her eye as the spanking progressed to its eventual ending. She seemed particularly uncomfortable when my sister was so loudly disrobing for her too-frequent spankings. Perhaps it was a “girl thing”. When the spanking was finally over, she would quickly dismiss us from the living room, so she could go to the room where the spanking had taken place and perform her after-spanking motherly duties to her bawling, red-bottomed child.

My parent’s spanking procedure varied little. Sometimes he (or my mother) would send me down to the basement with instructions to “get ready”, but more often Dad would walk me downstairs himself. In either case, I would know that my mother was gathering my brothers and sisters in the living room to tell them of my disgrace. There was an old couch down there (that was later removed to make space for my room) that was the scene of many of my early parental corrections. If my father had walked me down the stairs, he would sit in the exact center of that couch with me standing directly in front of him. He would start with a lecture that would quickly bring me to tears. He always insisted that I look him directly in the eyes while he was talking. The lecture always ended with a long, dramatic silence, with him still staring directly into my eyes. By now, my eyes would be stinging as I tried to keep them open through my tears. Finally he would utter the dreaded words, “Shoes, pants and underpants…now!” this was my cue to quickly get naked from the waist down for my imminent spanking. The only variation on this routine was if he had previously sent me down to “get ready”; in that case, I was expected to bare myself and wait in front of the couch for him to come down and do his fatherly duty.

In my pre-teen years, spankings were invariably to my bare bottom with the open palm of the parental hand. I would be compelled to bend over his lap in the traditional manner with my torso supported on the couch. Often I would do my crying, begging, wailing and promising straight into the surface of the couch, but sometimes he would offer me a throw pillow and instruct me to wrap my arms around it. This was a true kindness because that pillow considerably muffled the sounds of my humiliation. Over the years, he began demanding more and more cooperation from me as he reddened my bottom. I did not realize it at the time, but this was because, as my teen years approached, I was gradually becoming considerably larger and stronger than my father. He would not allow me to struggle, I was supposed to put myself across his lap and remain still for my punishment to the very best of my ability. Fortunately, he did not expect me to remain silent! Often during the process of a hard spanking, he would have me adjust my position; for example, he would command me to open or close my legs so he could reach every square inch of my bottom. While getting into position for a good spanking, I was normally given a choice of where to place my arms. I was allowed to hug the pillow with both arms, or I had the option of placing my right arm to the small of my waist for him to immobilize; but I was never allowed to attempt to cover myself, to twist excessively, or to physically oppose him in any way while I was being spanked. While he was spanking me, my father controlled my movements not with those promises of extra punishment that are so common in spanking literature, but with words; words of praise if I did well, and words of shame if I failed. Even when a fire was being lit on my bare behind, even when my bottom hurt so much that I was howling and begging like a 5-year-old, I never stopped wanting to please my father.

Usually the end of my spanking signaled the end of my punishment, but my father did occasionally give me red-bottom corner time if he thought I needed additional time to reflect on my crime. There was one memorable time, after I had been spanked for telling my mother a particularly egregious lie, that he made me stand in the corner for a full thirty minutes before he quietly left the room and returned with my mother. Still quite bare, I offered her a tearful apology, after which she took her place on my bunk, motioned me across her lap, and repeated my spanking!

I hasten to add at this point that I don’t recall ever feeling like I was being treated unfairly. My parent’s discipline was pretty much the same as that doled out to my friends by their parents. A few of my friends got much worse than myself, as evidenced by the ferocious belt marks I would see on their bottoms while dressing for gym class; and a few others of my friends were rarely spanked. My parents discipline regimen certainly represented a comfortable median for the times. Most importantly, my parents never spanked me while they were obviously angry, or without explaining exactly why I was being spanked, nor without being sure that I understood exactly how to avoid such spankings in the future.

My introduction to the paddle came very early in my thirteenth year. Until this time, I had never been spanked with anything other than the palm of my father’s or mother’s hand. I certainly knew that some of my friends were spanked with paddles, belts and hairbrushes, but my father always seemed to be able to do a perfectly good job with just his bare hand on my bare tush. As it turned out, my father never used a belt on any of us kids’ though he always kept the possibility open. He finally told me years later that his aversion to the belt was caused by a “bad experience” when he was growing up.

The problem that ultimately caused my introduction to the paddle started when I went to a friend’s house after supper one summer day without informing my parents. In daylight hours it was perfectly OK for me to go to any of several of my friend’s homes without specific permission, but my parents insisted on knowing where I was after dark. This particular day, I lost track of time and it was long past dark before I returned home. When I returned, I found my father in the basement, working at his bench. He gave me a very clear “talking to” about the family’s rules and told me to never again leave the property after dark without permission.

You guessed it! I stupidly did exactly the same thing the following week. Sneaking back into the house was not an option because my father again made himself busy in the basement while he awaited my shamefaced return. As I descended the stairs, he stopped me and instructed me to go and tell my mother that I was home, and then return immediately to the basement. (This was not only so she would know I was finally home, but also to alert her to gather my siblings and explain my imminent punishment to them.) That done, it was no surprise when Dad led me into my room, closed the door, sat on my bunk (the couch was long-gone to make space for my room) and repeated last week’s speech. His recycled speech had a considerably different ending than last week’s; he asked me to tell him exactly what I had done wrong and tell him what I should do in the future. After I stammered the required response, then required me to tell him what my punishment should be. We both knew the answer, but it was terribly hard for me to sentence myself! Finally I said the words; “a spanking sir”? He would not let me get away with that; he wanted to know “what kind of a spanking?” “A h-h-h-hard spanking?” I sobbed. “They are all hard,” he pressed, “how hard should this spanking be considering that you were warned about this just last week?” Tears running down my cheeks, I finally blubbered out the dreaded words “v-v-v-very hard until I c-can’t sit down.” Finally satisfied, he uttered those fearsome words;”shoes, pants and underpants”! Hopping alternately on each one foot, I removed my shoes, and then unhooked my belt, the button at the front of my pants, and unzipped my fly. It took about three more seconds to hook my thumbs in the waistband of my white briefs, lower my pants and underpants simultaneously, and step out of both them. I had no problem being naked in front of my father; it was the impending spanking that had my full attention! Moments later, I was in that all-to-familiar position across my father’s lap with my torso resting on my bed and my face pressed into my pillow, which I was hugging determinedly as if to prevent its escape.

What followed was one of my father’s more memorable spankings. He made me start with my legs spread far apart. After about a dozen scorching spanks on the meatiest part of my buttocks, designed to immediately break my reserve and bring me to tears, he spent several minutes down below my “sit spot” carefully spanking every nook and cranny that he considered “spankable”. Finally, he paused while I continued to sob into my pillow. He waited two or three minutes, just watching my reaction. As I waited, my sobbing did not decrease, but actually escalated into childish blubbering because I knew the hard part was coming. Finally, in a low, calm voice, he ordered me to close my legs tight and move out on his lap as far as possible (presumably so he could get a better swing for what was to follow). I am ashamed to say that I started begging loudly and childishly at this point, something that never had the slightest noticeable effect on my parents. Moments later, my butt exploded in pain so intense that it made all the red-bottomed fire that preceded it seem like a mere twinge. I howled, barely succeeding in muffling myself with my pillow so my siblings would not know how babyish I was acting. This last, worst, part of my spanking probably lasted less than thirty seconds, but to me, it seemed like thirty hours.

Moments later, I was allowed off of my father’s lap and invited into his arms. Still blubbering, I fervently apologized for my breach of his rules and promised him that I had finally learned my lesson and that he would never have to spank my bottom again; at least, not for that.

My promise lasted for about a week and a half, and I really did not mean to do it! I was outside in the yard enjoying the scant cool of a summer evening, when Nancy came walking down the sidewalk. There was a time when I wouldn’t be caught dead alone with Nancy, but now, certain changes were taking place in our teen bodies and lately Nancy’s company had seemed increasingly important. She called a hello, and stopped to talk, saying that her mother had sent her to the corner grocery for a loaf of bread. Before I knew what was happening, I was escorting her to the grocery, happy as a slightly-horny puppy dog. It was a mere ten minutes later when we arrived back at my house and she continued on to her home.

From a dark shadow beside the house, I heard my father call my name. Suddenly, I realized what I had done! Eyes to the ground, I went to my father. “I think you need to go down to your room and get ready, don’t you?” he asked. Desperately, I started to concoct some sort of explanation, but he quickly stopped me; “I saw everything,” he said, “now go downstairs and take off every stitch!” Sobbing, I fled down to my room, his final command ringing in my ear.

Father had never before told me to get completely naked for a spanking, but he had left no doubt what I was expected to do. Moments after I closed the door behind myself, I was in my birthday suit, trembling in fearful anticipation and shame. Ten minutes later, my young ears heard footfalls descending the steps. The doorknob turned, and my father walked into the room. “I need a few minutes to calm down,” he said, “I want you to stand in that corner until I return.” He left, leaving the light on and the door wide open. I prayed that nobody would stray downstairs while I was trapped naked in that brightly-lit corner. Nobody did, I suppose that my father told everybody that the basement was off-limits for awhile.

It was a full 60 minutes before I again heard footfalls on the steps. While I was waiting, all of the scary possibilities had been running through my head. Why was I naked? The strap kept coming to the forefront of my thoughts, I knew that some of my friends had to strip naked for the strap, even though it was normally applied mostly to the butt. I was scared to death that those footfalls belonged to my father, who was presumably returning to spank me, but I was even more scared that it might be my sister, (and perhaps one of her friends) and they would discover my ignominious predicament. As it turned out, the sounds I heard approaching were those of my father returning to deal with me. My stomach twisted as he came into my room, took me by the arm, and placed me dead center in front of my bunk. He sat down in front of me and stared in my eyes for several long moments. I felt tears running down both cheeks and sniffed loudly. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind about something. “I guess you are too old for those nursery spankings to do you any more good,” he mused, “we are going to have to figure out something else”. At that, he got back up and prowled around the room, obviously looking for a proper tool to use on my bare bottom. As my heart did a flip, he looked long and hard at my favorite leather belt, still in the loops of my pants lying in a tangle on the floor. It was plenty heavy enough to be a fearsome weapon in his hands. He reached down, disengaged it from the tangle of my clothes, and doubled it up. My eyes must have been as big as saucers! A strange look came over his face that I then thought must have been anger towards me, but I now know was an inner turmoil. Finally, he shook his head decisively, dropped the belt, and continued looking. He looked at the gadgets and gizmos on my shelves and seemed to not find what he was looking for. Finally, he opened my closet and rummaged around for a moment, finally emerging with a heavy, wooden hanger which he turned over in his hands several times. As I watched wide-eyed, he pulled the hanger apart and extracted the wooden pants-rod from the debris. He swished that rod through the air thoughtfully several times, and even tried it against his hand and thigh. Somehow, the rod did not quite measure up, and as he laid it down, his eyes fell upon a scrap of knotty pine board lying in the back corner of my closet. He picked it up and hefted it, making some type of a mental calculation.

Still carrying that pine board, he strode out the door towards his shop, calling over his shoulder that I should put on my pajama bottoms and follow. Thankful for the reprieve, I quickly pulled on my PJ bottoms and followed my father, where I found him measuring and sketching on the board. “You are going to make yourself a paddle,” he said. “How big do you think it should be to really teach you a lesson?” I guess he did not really expect an answer, because he continued sketching the outline of a paddle on that board. “Okay”, he finally said, displaying his final design “does that look like it will do the job?” “Y-Y-Yes sir” I stuttered. “Good,” he said, “cut it to size on the table saw, and then cut out the handle end on the band saw”. Under his watchful eye, I followed his directions. The result was a rough paddle about 4 inches wide and 14 inches long, including the handle. My new paddle was about the size of those tacky “board of education” paddles I had seen hanging in souvenir stores, but was considerably thicker and more capable than those toys. (Fortunately for me, knotty pine is not as heavy as some other woods my father could have chosen.) He put the paddle in the vise and showed me how to remove the sharp edges with a wood rasp, and then he allowed me to finish the job on our bench sander. He took the paddle from me and ran his hands all over it, apparently checking for splinters. He picked up a sanding block and worked a bit more, rounding off the corners until he was satisfied. Finishing, he hefted the paddle, slapped it against his own thigh, and nodded his approval in a way I had seen him do many times before when we worked together. “I guess you can go back in your room and take those PJ’s off now,” he said without any apparent rancor.

My heart thumping anew, I went into my bedroom to comply. I heard him go up the stairs and return about five minutes later (I think he wanted to discuss my coming punishment with my mother). His mind now totally made up, he strode briskly into my room, closed the door behind him, sat down on my bunk, and motioned his naughty, naked, child over his lap. My spanking started without further delay and started out as a carbon-copy of the last one. He was only using his hand, but I was soon sufficiently occupied by the growing pain in my behind to totally forget about that paddle. Soon, I was crying unashamedly into my pillow as my father’s hand lit a familiar fire in my nether regions. He spanked with his usual thoroughness, and care; making me adjust my position several times so he could spank every inch of my bottom to maximum effect. Then came his usual halt and the long, pregnant, delay. I know is seems impossible, but I was not even thinking of that paddle, he had never said that he was actually going to use it on me this time and frankly, a kid does not do his best thinking when he is in the middle of a hard spanking. I just knew that the hardest part of my spanking was still ahead of me. After an interminable delay, and the usual escalation of my crying as I realized that the “grand finale” of my spanking must be imminent, my father broke previous procedure by requiring me to place both of my hands in the small of my back. When he had both of my wrists safely immobilized in his big left hand, he again broke previous tradition my throwing his right leg over the back of my bare legs, effectively pinning me in place. I still did not get it! Then I heard, rather than immediately felt, a crack like a gunshot as my newly-teenaged bottom got its first taste of wood. Suddenly the pain hit me; it was like a bomb had gone off on by butt! I lifted my head off the pillow and my mouth worked like a fish, unable at first to take the deep breath that I desperately needed so I could properly scream. I suffered through three or four more of those ferocious paddle strokes before my lungs could finally follow the confused instructions from my frantic brain. Remote and cozy as it was, there was no way that my bedroom could contain the sounds of those paddle strokes and my resulting shrieks. Listening wide-eyed to the evidence of my distress, my sister and brothers immediately figured out that there was “a new sheriff in town” and correctly surmised that it could someday involve their own bottoms.

I have no idea how many strokes of that paddle my bare tush absorbed, but I know that I felt every one of them anew each time I sat down for well over the next week.

At some point, perhaps halfway through this part of spanking, my shrieks gradually dissolved into mere howls of pain. Sensing that my brain was trying to retreat into some type of protective fog, father’s spanks became much slower and more deliberate as he started sort of a question-and-response. (Spank) “Owwwwwww!” “Are you ever going to leave after dark without permission again?” “No dad” (Spank) “Owwwwww!” “Will this spanking help you to remember?” “Yes dad” (Spank) “Owwwwww!” What do you have to do to keep THIS (Spank) from happening again? “Follow the rules, Dad!” “What will happen if you do it again?” “S-Sp-Spank me with the paddle?” “Yes,” he said, “just like this!” That was his cue to give my tortured bottom perhaps ten finishing paddle strokes as I howled anew. With both of us exhausted, and me hurting desperately, by father allowed me up and gathered his red-bottomed, sobbing, trembling, wet-cheeked, snotty-nosed boy in a long hug.

Finally, he stood up and urged me to lay face-down on my bunk. It was just about then that my mother arrived with two icepacks. For the next half-hour, my parents worked solicitously on my bottom, first treating it with the ice to reduce the inevitable bruising and swelling, and then gingerly rubbing in a soothing cream. After gently placing a sheet over my throbbing bottom, they each kissed my cheek and quietly left me to cry myself to sleep. I never noticed nor cared that I had been put to bed like a toddler, and nearly two hours before my usual bedtime! That spanking worked. I am sure that my parents noted that my new paddle had elicited the desired improvement in my behavior. They never again had a problem with me disappearing after dark without permission!

The next day, my father and I worked on that paddle, rounding the edges, sanding it perfectly smooth, and drilling a hole in the handle so it could be hung in a convenient spot. My father took a fountain pen and dated our work in a precise draftsman’s hand, added his signature and handed the pen for me to do the same. This little ceremony complete, we finished my new paddle by painting it with the same shellac that coated the walls of my bedroom. The next day when the shellac had totally dried, we buffed it, threaded a leather thong through the hole in the handle, and hung it on the wall directly over my bunk, where I fervently (but vainly) hoped it would never again see action.

But see action it did! My spankings were relatively infrequent, but from that day on they always featured that paddle.

As my brothers and sisters reached their teens, that paddle also entered their lives. There was no particular age when it started, my parents just decided on an individual basis when it was time for them to “graduate” to my paddle. Perhaps because it was always considered “my” paddle, but also because of the privacy of my room, that paddle remained on the hook over my bed and my bedroom gradually became the family’s spanking room. It was not terribly unusual for me to hear a knock and to find a tearful brother waiting at my door, holding his pillow. (After the first couple of times, my parents would always send them down with their own pillow so they would not get mine wet.) Immediately knowing why he was there, I would invite him in, try to calm him down, and see that he properly prepared himself for what was to follow. Eventually, my father would appear. It seemed to depend on everybody’s mood, but sometimes I was invited to leave, and sometimes I would be asked to stay. If it was to be an especially hard spanking, my father might send me upstairs to fetch and fill the ice bags. When I stayed, I would usually hold my brother’s hands while my paddle did its work on his bare bottom. Afterwards, after a hug and a few quiet words, and possibly some tender ministrations with the ice bag, my father would leave and it fell to me to calm my little brother down, get at least his underpants back on him, and accompany him back to his room.

Although my sister was not the youngest, she was the last of us to start feeling my paddle. I will never forget the first time. I answered a knock at my door and found my mother and father, both grim faced, with my sister (holding her pillow) sobbing between them. My father asked if they could “borrow” my room for a while. As I stepped out, my mother caught me by the arm and whispered a request for me to prepare the ice bags. My sister apparently had to endure a rather long lecture, because her spanking had not yet started when I returned with the two filled ice bags. My bedroom door was (naturally) tightly closed, but my sharp, young, ears could hear most of what was being said. It was obvious that my sister was (as usual) far more focused on her impending spanking than on thinking about the behavior that earned it. The conversation finally tapered off. I heard my smother say something and then I distinctly heard my father say sharply, “Not just the jeans, take off your panties too”. “But I am too old for that,” my sister whined. My mother’s sharp retort nearly floored me; “you took off your panties for that boy and now you will take them off for your parents, in fact, take off every stitch!” (You guessed it; it was later confirmed that my sister was being punished because she had gotten caught in a heavy petting session with a neighbor boy) My sister wailed in protest, but apparently complied. Moments later, I finally heard the first hand spanks. I could tell from the voices that it was my mother doing the spanking. Soon my sister was crying vigorously. Five minutes later there was silence. After a few quiet moments, she again began wailing “No, no, no daddy, please no!” Naturally, her begging did no good and moments later; I heard the first pop of the paddle against her bottom. Suddenly, I realized that my mental picture of the scene had become just a bit too vivid; my penis was tenting the front of my pants. My sister’s anguished shrieking as her paddling continued managed to temporarily kill the vision and temporarily killed my ardor; good thing, because moments later the paddling was over and my mother had the door wide open looking for the ice bags. I stood rooted to the spot, staring at my naked, red-bottomed sister crying on my father’s shoulder. She certainly had changed since the last time I saw her naked! My mother thanked me for the ice and closed the door again, finally allowing me to return to my senses.

A few months later, having graduated from high school and worked a summertime job, I enrolled at the state college. The state college was 50 miles away; too far to commute, yet too close to stay on the campus for the weekends. My father was an active alumnus of the college and sharing his name opened some important doors for me there. Before I left home for the dormitory, my parents sat me down for a long talk. One sentence from that talk remained burned into my brain: “As long as you are living on our paycheck, you will live by our rules and our rules include that paddle hanging down in your room; is that clear?” I gulped and agreed. Their rules for me had mostly to do with making an honest effort in school and staying out of trouble. It was agreed that I would come home for weekends and holidays, and (to the disgust of my middle brother) that I would keep my bedroom.

Like many young men, I found many attractive distractions on the campus, and some of those distractions led to me turning in work late and earning grades that were below my parent’s standards. I felt that paddle three times in my freshman year, but the next year I did much better, only earning a paddling once. By my junior year I was a focused student; one who no longer seemed to need the paddle to make him behave. Likewise, my senior year went very well…until the final two weeks, when I got involved in a practical joke that went very bad. Suddenly, I was in big trouble with the school administration and it looked like I would not be graduating with my class. That was the hardest phone call I ever made to my father! He took the news with stony silence; finally I just hung up in disgrace.

The next day (a Friday) as I was walking out of my last class, I was shocked to find my father waiting for me in the hallway. Poker-faced, he collected me and my weekend’s schoolwork and drove me off in the family Studebaker. (Normally, I took the bus or caught a ride home with another student for my weekend stays at home) Halfway home, he finally spoke. “I was just in the Dean’s office and have made a deal to settle your problem and allow you to graduate with your class; fortunately for you, Dean Miller is an old professor of mine.” I started to thank my father with a rush of relieved words when he stopped me; “wait a minute”, he said, “you haven’t heard what the deal is yet!” Subdued, I allowed my father to finish; “Monday morning at 10 AM, you have an appointment with the Dean, you will tell him every detail of what happens to you this evening.” “He will probably ask to see your bottom, if so, you will drop your pants and show it to him.” Finally smiling just a bit, he finished; “you will probably be the only student in history to get away with mooning Dean Miller.”

I did not have to be a genius to figure out what “the deal” was; my father was taking me home so my paddle could collide repeatedly with my soon-to-be-bare bottom! Even though I was legally an adult and was larger and stronger than my father, my heart flipped in real fear at what was ahead, yet I was happy and relieved at the “deal” my father had worked out with the school administration. Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I asked father how he happened to think that the Dean would accept a spanking as my punishment. There was a long silence… I thought he had forgotten about the question when he finally spoke; “Let’s just say that I was not an angel during my college days and that things were a bit different then.” After another thoughtful pause he continued; “…and you can say that I learned first-hand about the Dean’s attitude towards spanking. I figured that it hadn’t changed over the years, and it turned out that I was right.”

A few minutes later, we were pulling into our family drive. “Go directly downstairs and get yourself ready” my father said; “just so you know, we will soon have the house to ourselves for the next couple of hours.” “You are sort of an adult and you deserve at least that little bit of privacy.”

I closed the car door quietly, slinked through the side door of the house and immediately fled down to my basement sanctuary. A few minutes later, I heard the Studebaker start up again and drive away. I correctly assumed that my mother had invented some sort of a shopping trip for the family and everybody was now gone from the house except my father and me.

It was only about ten minutes later when father finally descended the stairs. Although he had given no special instructions, he was pleased to find the bedroom door wide open, the paddle conveniently waiting on the bunk and his grown son naked and standing in the corner, with tears already in his eyes.

There is no need to go into great detail, but I had to suffer through a heart-rending lecture before, almost gratefully, finally being allowed to lower myself across my father’s lap. My father then acknowledged that I was considerably bigger and stronger than he, but he “expected that my paddle would handily make up the difference.” His main concern was my hands; he did not want to accidentally hit them with my paddle. He told me that he would try to keep them safe in the small of my back, but if that did not work we would have to figure out some type of restraint. As in the past, my spanking had two parts; except that this time my father used the paddle for both parts. The first part was the “warm-up” where he covered my entire bottom area with many moderately-hard spanks until it was bright red. By the time he was done with that first part, he had me sobbing lightly, even though I was doing my very best to remain silent. Noticing this, my father reminded me quietly that we were truly alone and that it was perfectly okay to “let go”. I waited impatiently through the long delay between parts, but started breathing heavily in true fear when he pinned my legs down tightly with his right leg and held my wrists together so tightly it was painful. For the first time in two years, I found myself truly helpless, open to whatever my father decided to do with me. After reminding me that it was imperative that I not reach back, my “real” spanking started, with him delivering paddle-swats to the fullness of my bottom with almost his full strength. I immediately roared, and then screeched at him, imploring for at least a brief respite so I could maintain at least a bit of my dignity. But that dignity was exactly what my father intended to (at least momentarily) strip away, leaving me once again his defenseless child. It worked; God did it work! Moments after he had started spanking my bare bottom in earnest, father was in full control and I had dissolved into honest, heartfelt, bawling. I am sure that my bottom jounced and bounced as that hunk of knotty pine did its best work. I certainly must have tried to twist and turn in an involuntary attempt to get my bottom away from that paddle, or at least to make my father avoid some of my more sore spots, but my involuntary struggling had no effect. This part of the spanking lasted twice as long as it had over lasted before; I suppose that my father wanted to be sure that I still had some impressive marks next Monday when I was scheduled to visit the Dean. In spite of myself, my right hand broke away from my father’s grip and reached back to shield my bottom cheeks from my father’s attentions, Immediately, my father stopped, regained control of my hand, and warned me that I would have to be restrained if this continued. I whined that I was doing the best I could and begged him not to restrain me. I really did try; I was scared to death of being tied up and spanked, and perhaps a bit of the fight had finally been spanked out of me, but fortunately, I did not break loose again. My father’s swats became spaced further apart, but no gentler as he paced himself, making the spanking last longer and allowing himself to more carefully place each swat for maximum effect and for a nice, even, distribution of welts and bruises all over my tush.

Long before he was done, I was crying like a spanked toddler. Now that the floodgates were fully open, I was crying away the tension caused by these last months of college and from the results of my recent idiocy which had nearly caused an academic “train wreck”. In later years, I thanked my father many times for making sure that we had full privacy for that spanking. I can’t imagine my younger siblings hearing their grown brother getting spanked so hard and hearing him act like such a baby.

Finally, my father laid down my paddle, let me up off his lap, and gave me a long hug as I continued to sob. His duty done, he left me alone. Just like the very first time I felt that paddle, I spent the rest of the evening on my belly, lying on my bed in pained solitude. It makes little difference how old you are, a hard spanking is a hard spanking.

Weeks later, I was graduated from college, and employed. My father helped me find an apartment that I could afford, and with his blessing I moved out of the house and started what was to be a short bachelorhood. The oldest of my brothers finally inherited my bedroom and my position in the household. That paddle stayed with my parents for several years, where it still saw occasional use educating my sister and brothers. When the last of my siblings had finally left the house for good, my parents invited my wife and I over for supper and presented us with “my” paddle. Before giving it up, he had traced the outline so he could make faithful replicas for the others. I don’t use it nearly as often as my father did, but my kids know that paddle well and respect both its function and its history. They know the story behind it and they know the significance of the date and signatures inscribed on it, and they certainly know how it feels when it is used on their bare bottoms. My oldest son will be the person to carry that paddle into the next generation. It will be up to him to decide if he should use it for its intended purpose, or just cherish it as a family heirloom and admire its wonderful finish, buffed by impact with so many bare bottoms.

Note: Like many Guy Spencer stories, this one uses actual scenery from Guy’s childhood. The knotty pine bedroom, the basement, the after-spanking ice bag and even that old radio are all real things from Guy’s past. Other than that, this story is complete fiction; all of its characters and incidents exist only on these pages and in Guy’s creative mind.

Copyright (c) Guy Spencer 2005