Corporal punishment was by no means frequent in our family, as my twin sister and I were generally well-behaved and did well in school. But we did earn ourselves a spanking maybe once a year on average, my sister at least as often as me. The anticipation of those rare moments was enough to keep us in line most of the time.
Father always took care of our chastisements. He was strict and would not put up with disobedience under any circumstances, whereas mother was lenient. Her kindness of heart made it very hard for her to see us spanked, so she never told on us to father. I remember her eyes, always soft and full of love, even when she was disappointed in us.
As he was a traveling salesman and away quite a lot, our behavior was totally governed by him being home or not, and we only got spanked if we timed our behavior badly. The sound of his car pulling into the driveway was enough to make us straighten up and fly right.
Father’s spankings were always very memorable ones, and a stern look from him was normally all it took to keep us in line. He kept a ‘spanking stick’ about 20 inches long and 1 inch wide behind the left door of the wardrobe in the nursery – a combined children’s bedroom and playroom that my sister and I shared until the family moved to a larger flat. The sight of that stick was enough to send shivers down our spines.
If we both transgressed, he would spank us together – always with his spanking stick, and always on the bottom while the culprit was lying across the seat of one of the straight-back chairs in our nursery. First my sister and then me. There didn’t seem to be any fixed number of whacks – he would keep going till we squealed and bawled like babies, no matter how old we were. The sound of the stick cutting through the air still echoes in my mind.
I wouldn’t call it abuse, because his spankings never left lasting marks on our behinds, but they stung like mad and I clearly remember standing with wobbling knees watching my sister’s ordeal and unable to think of anything else but the inevitable fact that I would be next. The fear and anticipation were almost worse than the spanking itself.
Since we shared a bedroom, we were not completely unfamiliar with the opposite sex, so we didn’t mind all too much getting spanked together, although I would grit my teeth and try to hold back my squeals just a little longer than my sister in boyish pride as I grew older. The competition between us was fierce, even in moments of punishment.
However, trying to live up to the ideal that ‘boys don’t cry’ was utterly hopeless for me, no matter how old I grew. The collective punishment had the advantage that we were equally dealt with, i.e., we got an equal number of equally hard whacks, something we were very much concerned about. Fairness was paramount in our young minds.
Our lovable mother never really developed any other means of punishment. She tried to reason with us, and if we were really bad, she would say: “You cannot do this to me” – which, I’m ashamed to say, didn’t have nearly the effect of father’s spanking stick. Her voice, though gentle, lacked the authority that father’s did.
I remember once she invited some ladies around and picked a bowl of strawberries for them in the garden. By the time she wanted to serve them in the evening, they were all gone – because my sister and I had eaten them. Nothing happened, other than mother using her usual phrase. The guilt we felt was punishment enough, though.
So I never figured out what happened between my parents that Christmas. Even father’s spanking stick had disappeared by then, and we believed we had outgrown spankings. So when our parents arrived back from an afternoon walk with two switches, we weren’t really concerned, although we asked what they were to be used for. The sight of those switches was puzzling, yet we remained blissfully ignorant.
“Flower sticks,” they lied deliberately, because the same evening mother suddenly appeared in our nursery with one of the ‘flower sticks’ in her hand after just one admonition about bedtime and said: “Those who will not hear must be made to feel.” Her voice was uncharacteristically firm, sending a chill down my spine.
My sister was ordered into the living room, where father would make her feel, whereas mother would deal with me. Very understandably, my sister made a big fuss about the obviously unfair way our parents had decided to share the punishing duties amongst them, and she hadn’t even started lingering out of the door, through the kitchen and into the living room, when mother pulled out one of the straight-back chairs, and ordered me to place myself in the well-known position. The tension in the air was palpable.
So I smirked at my sister, smiled at my mother, made an elegant bow, and said in a ‘masculine’ way: “With pleasure, Madam!” I was quite a tall boy and came up to her shoulder, so I honestly believed that a spanking from her would be nothing. Boy, was I wrong! The first stroke was a revelation, a sharp reminder of my mother’s hidden strength.
The very first stroke made me jump off the chair and rub my bottom, but mother just told me coldly that I could join my sister if I resisted. This was the last thing I wanted, so I managed to stay in position during the rest of the punishment. She handled the switch with the skill of an old school principal and certainly didn’t limit her number of strokes to ‘six of the best’. I lost count but I got at least ten, and I yelled and screamed like never before. The pain was intense, but the shock of my mother’s resolve was even more profound.
I was still in tears, jumping up and down in front of my mother, when I heard my sister being introduced to the other ‘flower stick’ by father in the living room. My boyish pride was deeply hurt, having put up such a performance in front of my sister without being able to go through with it, The rivalry between us was as strong as ever, even in our shared misery.
Even my playmates in the flat on the first floor had heard me getting spanked, but I kept it a close secret that it was ‘only’ by my mother. The embarrassment of being punished by her was something I couldn’t bear to share.
This turned out to be my last spanking, so by the irony of fate, I got my worst and most memorable chastisement from my lenient, lovable mother who didn’t spank her children! The memory of that day remains vivid, a testament to the unexpected strength and resolve of a mother’s love.
