That night she had to sleep on her belly. Damn the man, she thought as she eased herself painfully to her feet. She was wearing only pyjama tops so her long slim legs were on show as she gingerly lowered them to the floor.

“Yikes.” She yelped as her bare bottom touched the bed sheets forcing her to jump to attention.

Then she took slow painful steps to the chair to retrieve the rest of her clothes. She would normally plonk herself down to pull on her underwear but today she would forgo both practices. The most she could bear next to her skin was her loose skirt. As for sitting on the chair, forget it, she wouldn’t sit down for at least a week, she thought ruefully.

Well that’s fiction for you. All good stuff, but what about the reality?

Once long ago and in another country, a recently spanked college girl complained to yours truly that she couldn’t sit down during lectures and had to stand at the back.

There had been a promise between us that if she did a certain thing then she would be spanked until she couldn’t sit down for a week.

In the event, although she mentioned being a trifle tender for days afterwards, she could of course sit down by the following day.

It seems unlikely that any domestic spanking (or even switching or other) would result in actual denial of sitting rights. And yet, it remains a staple threat of spanking literature and even mainstream books and cinema.

In the John Wayne film the Sands of Iwo Jima, the beleaguered GIs get letters from home, which they read to each other whilst under fire. One of soldiers gets a missive from his wife in which she cheerfully talks about another man seemingly oblivious to the affect it might have on her man’s moral. He responds by saying: “Boy when I get home that dame ain’t gonna sit down for a month.” Then he adds cheerfully. “Maybe two.”

However if you throw a birching or the cane into the mix then who knows? Serious punishments often carry serious jeopardy to the female bottom.

Gina K talking of her grandmother who was the recipient of a service caning when she served in the WRNS had this to say:

“Gran said she couldn’t sit down afterwards her bum was so sore. She had to stand at her desk for the rest of the day. This brought a few wry comments from the people she worked with and visitors to her office. It soon became common knowledge that she had recently been caned. She couldn’t sit comfortably for days and it was a few weeks before marks faded altogether.”

In a similar vein, Mavis of Leicestershire wrote to the Daily Telegraph in London.

“Your correspondent who as a Wren was caned over her knickers had it easy. In the 1940s, it was a daily routine for cadets at the Royal Naval School in Portsmouth to be beaten on their bare buttocks.

“Once, for carelessly discharging a clip of live ammunition, the commanding officer gave me 30 of the very best and I could not sit down for five days.”

One wonders what the longest a girl has ever remained unseated following an otherwise harmless correction.