What a pretentious title, don’t you love it? Someone else’s anecdote triggered some long forgotten memories and suggested this theme.

Amber was 14 at the time, sorry but bear with this, it’s not about kids. She had skipped detention, a punishment she had got for not doing her lines. In 1979 the only recourse the school head had was to suspend her from school for 10 days. Amber and her parents were outraged. If she had been a boy, she would have just been caned. This really set the cat among the pigeons, upset an apple cart or two and… well you get the picture. Girls weren’t caned. Why not? Amber wanted to know.

Eventually the head of year, Miss D, who had previous experience in Scotland where they weren’t so reluctant to beat girls, agreed that she would do the deed.

That was not quite the end of it because Amber argued that boys could wear trousers when they were caned. OK so she was finally given permission to change into trousers for the cane. You might think that the old head, Mr H, was sorry that anyone had ever given her lines by now.

This was a decision that she may have regretted. As on the punishment day in question there she is the only girl in the school wearing trousers. Never has a girl been so followed by so many boys. So when she went to see Miss D everyone knew why she was there. The braver boys listened at the door, but were shooed away by an amused pose of women teachers.

By the time she left the room, she was walking very stiffly and her face was red from crying. Her friends then escorted her to the girl’s cloakroom, where no doubt she had to reveal her war wounds. Every boy in the school’s imagination was working overtime by this point.

OK so what. Well as it happened about four years later while she was in the Sixth Form, a sort of college arrangement that used to be attached to a school (for those too young or not from the UK), she again got into trouble and guess what, she took the caning option once again.

A few years later a mutual friend bumped into her at a party and the subject came up. Far from being shy about it, she said it had been ‘a bit of a laugh’ and not as bad as some of the good hidings she had got as an apprentice. This particular tomboy had confirmed her image by going into the motor trade as a mechanic. There were some details, but they are rather fanciful. Maybe she was fantasising, but that is the whole point, she was spanko in the making, a girl standing at the gates of womanhood.

Closer to home and on the same theme, around the same time yours truly had a job in supermarket. It was a small local shop where only four of us worked. Alice, we will call her, was around the same age and lunches and tea breaks got taken together.

There was a lot of banter and sometimes a play-fight ensued. Then one day she did the ‘old bucket of water above the door’ prank, the manager being out. The water missed, but muggings had the job of mopping the floors.

Later Alice was cornered in the stock room.

“I am sorry it was just a joke.” She said somewhat nervously.

Being a very young man (boy) there was no clear idea of the method of retribution at this point. However, it just so happened that the next job was sweeping up and this boy was holding a dustpan brush.

“What are you going to do with that?” Alice asked.

“What do you think?” (Sweep the floor, obviously, duh!)

“Oh.” Her hands went to her jeans-clad bottom. “I guess I have it coming.”

Penny drops. (Double duh!)

She didn’t struggle much as she went over the knee. The spanking itself was a short one through clothing. Did it hurt her?

“Ow yes. But I have had much worse, I don’t mind. My boyfriend does it all the time and he is not as bad as mum is.”

“Is?”

Blushes for England and then some!

“You won’t tell Lou?” She begs.

Lou was the other girl on the checkout. In return for some details, silence was bought. Then the manager came back.

More details were eventually forthcoming, but it is hard now to separate the memories from the fantasies. She was no stranger to the brush and both mummy and boyfriend favoured bare bottoms.

“Next time then.” She didn’t argue, although she was a really good blusher.

Sadly a few weeks later she confided that she was pregnant and the opportunity never came again.