Spanks. Spanks a Lot

I'm always astounded when what I think are simple, universal experiences are anything but. I mean, yeah, I realize that some things, like your parents hiding ancient Indian skulls in your closet or being forced to pick up mangoes as a child are fairly esoteric, but most of what I write here I just naively assume are experiences that just about everyone who grew up in roughly the same time period as I did can share and laugh at.

So yeah, I'm always a little amazed that people are shocked that I went to a high school that still spanked students.

I grew up in a time when most parents spanked their kids. Most parents don't spank anymore which is probably a good thing. All it really teaches you (or taught me, anyway) is that there is someone bigger and more powerful than you who can cause you physical pain, so it's best to sneak around and not get caught. Or that you can inflict pain on someone smaller than you, like say, a convenient younger brother or sister.

I was spanked as a kid, and I hated it. Looking back, my parents had to live with me 24/7. I'm surprised they didn't beat me more just on principle. The weird thing was, it always seemed like any adult back then had free reign to grab you and start spankin.' I remember the first time I got spanked by a teacher. I was laughing at a comment someone next to me made in my second grade class. My teacher grabbed me by the arm, lifted me out of my desk into the dark, deserted hallway and gave me two licks with a ruler. While it hurt physically, the worst part was having to go back into class and sit down while everyone knew I was bad and got spanked. Also, I was shaking and trying not to cry.

Of course, that was in Mississippi, so I was probably lucky I didn't end up on a junior chain gang.

There were always teachers you had to look out for. There was a teacher later in elementary school who was notorious for shaking the hell out of kids. I know, because it happened to me. Once again, I was laughing, this time in a line, when she came up and said, "You think that's funny? Do you think this is funny," as she shook my little fourth grade body around like a paint can. This was a public high school in Florida. No other teachers came running up saying, "Hey, crazy teacher, I think you've shaken him enough," or "Hey! You know you can't shake kids, crazy teacher! We had that big staff meeting about that!" She wasn't even my teacher, just a woman who saw a kid who needed some shaking and decided she was the one for the job.

Most kids who grew up in the same era have similar stories; whether they themselves were spanked or shook, or they saw or heard about classmates getting similar punishments. This is probably why when a kid was called to the office, the entire class had to go "Oooooooooooooooh."

But what really throws people is when I casually mention that I was spanked in high school. In the 1980s. That's right, while everyone else in the country was dancing around to Kajagoogoo, having their John Hughes-esque day-glo good times, students at our high school were regularly spanked by adults.

I'm not sure what you had to do to get licks. I only remember getting them for talking/laughing in class (careful readers can detect a trend here) and once for getting three tardies. I don't know if girls got spanked or that was just a punishment for the guys. I do remember the last time I went in. I was a senior, which really seems too old for someone to get spanked. The dean gave me a choice of three licks or a three day suspension. I took the licks, since my parents wouldn't have to find out.

He called in a secretary. Apparently you had to have a witness. She looked at me and said, "Oh, I don't like it when they're little like this. They remind me of my grandchildren." I remember thinking, "You have the power to stop this, lady. Stand up and say something, and we can all walk out of here."

No dice. I grabbed a desk, took out my wallet, and spread my legs. Licks were delivered via an actual wooden paddle. The first one took a while, I guess he was warming up or trying to build suspense. It wasn't too bad, but holy crap did the next two sting. Just like elementary school, I didn't cry (plus, by now I had the advantage of being almost a full-grown man), but I was pretty shaky as I left the office.

In the years since I've had a number of jobs that required me to do things I didn't necessarily want to do, so I sympathized with the dean a bit more. The guy got a degree in education, thinking he was going to mold young minds, and instead he goes home each day with a sore shoulder and cramped hand from spanking teenage boys.

Years later, in my erotic life, I met several partners who liked the occasional spank. I am above all a gentleman, so I obliged. I'll admit, it was pretty fun, even though part of me was thinking, "didn't she get enough of this in high school?" Then I realized she probably had a normal upbringing where she wasn't getting spanked by deans for being late to class three times.

 It also made me wonder if maybe I was wrong in giving that dean the benefit of the doubt.

The Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner

I'm not sure how I stumbled into joining the track team. I think some friends from middle school joined freshman football and were already reaping the rewards in female attention. I would soon discover that there was a big difference between track and football when it came to the ladies.

It was determined that I was too uncoordinated for the hurdles, too wimpy for discus or shotput, and too slow for the sprints. So I was shuffled off to the distance events.

While some might see this as the deep right field of track (my position throughout middle school PE), it suited me just fine. I have a strong stubborn streak, so this was probably the best place for me. I could just keep on keepin' on, and try not to come in last.

Distance running was fun, giving me the same feeling long-distance bike rides give me now. You're completely alone, you don't have to talk to anyone, and you can use the time as a sort of meditation, to work out humorous blog posts or life-changing plans or what have you. Plus, at the end, you feel physically and mentally wrung out, a nice ...afterglow of a feeling.

But for all the character building and sportsmanship and whatnot I suppose I learned, one of the things a former high school distance runner will never forget is the boredom.

Getting out of school at 1:30 was awesome! Then you'd ride a bus for about an hour, which was cool, since I'd pass the time by blaring punk rock, throwing food out the window, and being obnoxious. Then you get to the school hosting the track meet.

Then you waited.

And waited.

And waited.

You'd watch everyone else compete in their events, at least for a while. You couldn't eat or drink anything. Well, maybe some people could. I couldn't. Distance events were the last things scheduled, so by the time your event rolled around, everyone else was sitting on the bus, ready to go home, while you had spent 7 hours alternately nervous and bored before your 15 minutes of running (or more. I once ran an extra lap since nobody was there to tell me how many I completed).

Cross country was a little better, if only because you ran through actual trails, with nature and stuff around you, and you were usually finished by 11 in the morning.

Secretly, we all realized running was boring, but still got all indignant that we weren't generating the same excitement as other sports. Once we were practicing while a TV crew set up to film that night's football game. With all the righteous anger a group of teenagers can gather, we peppered the poor cameraman with comments about how he should be filming the real athletes, us. Those football players didn't even have any lower body strength! There's no way those guys could last more than an 880!

Those were all great arguments, but you know why they didn't film us? Because we were boring! Who the hell would want to watch a bunch of teenagers huffing and puffing through the woods for 20 minutes? Hell, we didn't want to watch each other and we were on the team together.

I actively discouraged my parents from attending meets because I liked to act the fool without my parents around to assess the damage I was doing to the family name, but I'd also like to think I'd spare them the boredom of sitting on some unpleasant bleachers for hours on a Saturday morning after working all week. Mom and Dad, you're welcome.