I'm not really sure. I've been "into" spanking as long as I can remember. My earliest memory related to this subject is from my pre-school days (possibly age four), when I spanked the panties of a little neighbor girl (of about the same age) with whom I was playing. My mother caught me in the act and proceeded to explain why it was unacceptable to spank another person. Of course her explanation was punctuated by many strong open-handed swats to my own rump. At the time I failed to appreciate the irony of the situation, engaged as I was in bawling my eyes out.

Thus I learned at a very tender age that my interest in spanking must be kept secret from the rest of the world. I never enjoyed being on the receiving end of corporal punishment, and it was obvious that spanking other people myself was a dicey proposition at best.

My sole consolation was the fact that I attended rural/suburban North American public schools back in the 1960s and 70s when corporal punishment was still employed on a relatively frequent basis. I was therefore able to watch (or at least hear) my classmates "getting it" several times a week. The fact that my own obnoxious behavior caused my backside to receive its fair share (at least) of this unwanted attention was simply one more painful fact of life.

My parents dealt out spankings in an impromptu, unceremonious manner. I got it right there, right then, wearing whatever I happened to be wearing when I crossed the outer boundary of parental patience. Hand spankings were the norm, although my parents did have "The Stick." The Stick was a solid cylinder of hardwood just under two feet long and about one half inch in diameter. Painted red, The Stick had once been the handle to some push-toy I owned as a toddler. Perched on the kitchen windowsill, The Stick was a constant reminder of my parent's ultimate authority over their only offspring.

Never really a "bad boy" in the classic sense of the term, I managed to get into somewhat less than the ordinary amount of general mischief, both by myself and with my friends. Of course, I was an overweight, asthmatic loner who spent much more time reading than playing sports. Known at school as a "brain" and a nerd, I compensated with a ready wit.

In fact I often overcompensated. A natural born humorist, I slipped easily into the role of class clown. Alas, in those days much of my humor was of the insult variety (Don Rickles was my hero). So although I did manage to endear myself to many of my peers (at least the ones who weren't my target at the moment), my wit was perceived by most of the adult population as nothing more than childish impertinence or even downright insolence. In truth most of the spankings I received as a child were the direct result of impudent comments directed at my elders. (I almost wrote "superiors" instead of "elders." Then I recalled that I'm an only child and have never had any superiors.) (See what I mean?) In short, my smart mouth caused my dumb ass to be turned a glowing shade of red on a regular basis.

The bulk of the remainder of the punishments I received were due to my stubbornness, which could put a Missouri mule to shame. Firmly established as the center of my own universe, I could easily ignore the rising temper of a parent. Happily I continued to do whatever it was I wanted to do. Until, that is, the fateful words "...or I'll fetch The Stick!" were uttered. This rarely failed to get my complete attention.

Those rare occasions were painful indeed. Mom could sometimes be talked out of using The Stick, even as she advanced on me armed with the dreadful weapon. But whenever Dad went for The Stick, my buns were as good as toasted. Both parents employed the same stance for chastising their wayward son. I all too quickly found myself bent over and pinned between a strong left arm and a left hip and/or leg. Although my arms were free to move in front of me, they had no chance to get back to where they were so desperately needed for defensive purposes. The tightly stretched seat of my pants made a perfect target for either hand or Stick.

I didn't enjoy these experiences despite my early interest in the process. I started bawling loudly and sincerely as soon as, if not before, the first swat hit home. My rationale was that I was going to cry anyway, so I might as well start immediately and hope for an early cessation of hostilities. My parents never announced a set number whacks. The beat went on, steady as a metronome, until the drummer thought I had suffered sufficiently for my crime. Since I firmly believed that I had suffered enough before a finger had been laid on me, I did my level best to demonstrate my penitent state of mind. Said demonstration usually took the form of window rattling howls of pain and anguish punctuated by earnest, high pitched apologies and promises to be good forever and ever, amen.

Lest any reader think my parents cruel, let me assure you that they were anything but. My parents were the two most patient and caring people I have ever known. I, on the other hand, was a major league, all-star pain in the ass. Spankings at home were frequent, but not really all that serious. Six to ten open-handed swats, even hard ones delivered in the heat of anger, were not going to cause serious damage to the buttocks of a chubby boy who was wearing jockey shorts and trousers or jeans. I felt them, to be sure, and was very sorry for myself both during the spanking and for an hour or so afterwards. But by the next day the spanking itself was forgotten, although I usually managed to behave myself for at least a few days.

Sessions with The Stick were more serious, of course. But even then most of the additional pain was mental. A hand spanking began almost the same instant I realized it was coming. But when an angry parent marched to the kitchen to fetch The Stick I got to stand and watch, a dreadful queasy feeling in my stomach, pleading desperately to be given one more chance. Even worse was the sight of that angry parent bearing down on me, the terrifying red wand in hand. In truth I usually received only two to five whacks with The Stick, and the close quarters afforded by the pinned-against-the-hip posture meant they couldn't hit nearly as hard as possible with more formal positions. Don't get me wrong, the whacks were more than effective. An inflexible weapon, The Stick landed with a kind of thudding whack. The result was a deep, dull pain that took a day or two to fade completely. As far as I know I was never visibly bruised by The Stick (not that I spent a lot of time examining my butt in the mirror).

I was spanked from early childhood up until the age of eleven. Up to age seven or eight the spankings were frequent (once or twice a week), although The Stick was used only for serious misbehavior. From the ages of eight through eleven the frequency dropped to once or twice a month, but now The Stick was used if it was available. Around age twelve my parents turned to grounding me and instituted a demerit system for bad behavior. Excess demerits were taken out of my allowance rather than my hide, so the spankings stopped, at least at home.

Mom and Dad didn't actually say they wouldn't spank me anymore, however. When I suddenly realized (not long before my thirteenth birthday) that it had been many months since my last appointment with The Stick I waited weeks before mentioning it to my parents. The Stick was still there on the kitchen windowsill, after all. Afraid that they had "just forgotten" to use it, I didn't particularly want my curiosity to be the cause of them correcting (ahem...) that oversight. I finally asked, after waiting until I was safely in my teens, and was told that I was indeed too old for that type of punishment.

The Stick finally disappeared from its sunny spot in the kitchen. Of course Dad told me that he could always find it again if I really got out of hand. Or failing that he could always cut a switch from the birch trees growing in the woods behind our house. He never carried out either threat, settling instead for cuffing me a few times through my teen years, mostly for being insolent to Mom. (Dad was a chivalrous guy. He would tolerate a certain amount of impudence from me if he was the target. But he smacked me nearly every time he heard me sass Mom, or even if she reported such an event which occurred when he wasn't around.)

Bear in mind that for much of this time I had no clue what sex was, so there was no real sexual connection between spanking and sex, at least in my sheltered life and mind. The first unique twist in my spanking obsession occurred at the age of eleven, when one of my sixth grade classmates successfully avoided half of a promised ten swat paddling by threatening to wet his pants. From that point on I was fascinated by the idea of a miscreant losing control of his or her bladder either during a spanking, or during the agonizing wait before a spanking, or even during the painful aftermath of a spanking. Note that I have little interest in watersports, at least in the classic erotic sense of the word. My interest in this area is limited to incontinence which occurs in conjunction with corporal punishment.

Junior High School was the last stop for corporal punishment in the public school system I attended. There wasn't quite as much spanking as in elementary school, but what there was tended to be much more intense. It was during this time that the remainder of my glands began to wake up. Unwanted erections at school are an embarrassing rite of passage for teen aged boys, and it didn't take long for my ever-nimble brain to realize that my most painful and persistent erections were caused by witnessing the corporal punishment of classmates, especially girls.

As spanking became less of a reality in my life, I began to actively seek out references to spanking in books and other media. In college I proved to be a killer Trivial Pursuit player. I credit this to the hundreds of hours that I spent in libraries and book stores searching for references to spanking and CP in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books. This background also significantly contributed to my becoming a published author. (Sorry, I'm not giving out my real name at this time. Besides, you've never heard of me. People don't realize that 98% of all published authors are virtual unknowns, at least when compared with superstars like Anne Rice and Steven King.)

Although all the spanking discussed up until this point in my tale is non-consensual, it became apparent by my mid-teens that I simply didn't enjoy dishing out non-consensual spankings.

The first example of this occurred during my junior year of high school. The chess team, of which I was a member, had just returned from representing our school at the state scholastic chess championships. It was after dark on a Sunday night in late winter. The team members were horsing around in front of the school. We had all telephoned our parents on a pay phone and were waiting for them to pick us up. The coach had gone to return the school van we used for our trip to its designated parking space behind the building, and to retrieve his own car.

The youngest member of the team, who was in fact an extremely obnoxious eighth grader who attended the adjacent junior high school, was going on again about how wonderful he was. After an entire weekend of this, we had just about had enough of the little twerp. At last two of the seniors couldn't stand it any more. They bodily picked our team prodigy and bent him over a nearby low stone wall and invited me to give him "a good spanking." (If I had been a participant of alt.sex.spanking at that point in time, the title of my message reporting the event would probably have been "Startled at School!")

As you might imagine, my heart missed a beat or two as my brain, weary from an entire weekend of travel and tournament chess, tried to cope with this astounding turn of events. A quick look around showed that the coach was still nowhere in sight. (The coach intended to wait around until all of us had been retrieved by our families, so he would be back soon.) What the heck! As I positioned myself to take joyful advantage of an opportunity I had been waiting for all my life (or so it seemed at the time), the intended beneficiary of the ritual was making it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn't pleased with the situation.

The first swat wasn't very strong, though the little scamp acted like he has just been branded. My cohorts egged me on to hit harder, which I really wanted to do - for a few reasons. Not only was I really interested in this kind of thing (on several levels), but the little monster in question had been my roommate in the dorm where we stayed during the tournament that weekend. I was therefore even more fed to the teeth with his shenanigans than the others. (I strongly suspect that the sympathy of the other team members led to my being offered the role of executioner in the first place.)

An amazing thing happened, though. My swats hardly increased in strength, since something just seemed wrong with what we were doing. Then it hit me. This wasn't spanking as I found it fascinating. Two 17-year-old boys holding down a 13-year-old boy while a 16-year-old boy smacks his butt is not a playful punishment, but a simple case of bullying. I had been bullied as a small-for-my-age primary school student and wanted no part of bullying others. I stopped smacking the kid and walked away. The others taunted me a bit for cowardice, but I just laughed off the whole affair as a joke "punishment." The prodigy didn't think it was a joke, although to his credit he didn't squeal on us and did tone down his obnoxiousness level a bit for the rest of the year. (So here again the punishment, although mild, did in fact serve as a deterrent.)

It quickly became apparent that although I was interested in virtually every facet of corporal punishment, certain aspects held a special fascination for me. The idea of rituals surrounding the act of CP developed into a primary area of interest early on. It seems likely that this fascination stems from the fact that my personal CP experience involved almost no ritual. My home spankings, as mentioned above, included no ritual whatsoever. At school the miscreant did have to walk to the place of execution and take the required position, but there was no extraneous activity involved, save for additional scolding by the teacher before or after the punishment.

I'm an Anglophile, taking delight in all things English, especially their comedy and their corporal punishment rituals. As I prowled the stacks of libraries and the aisles of bookstores looking for spanking references, I soon found that english boarding school stories really hit most of my hot buttons. Kneeling at the altar of the flogging block or having to touch toes for "six of the best" were cool to read about, but even better was the pomp and circumstance leading up to the main event. And nobody does pomp and circumstance better than the English.

Shortly after high school I found my first willing spanking partner. He was a good friend who turned out to be submissive. (Neither of us are gay, and our "intimate" relationship was limited to spankings cheerfully given and received.) I seemed to be in heaven, although things were far from perfect. We had no money for toys, and had to make do with a paddle crafted, in secret, from some spare wood my dad had laying around. The real problem was that we were both woefully inexperienced and uninformed about simple things that would have really added enjoyment to our play.

We were doing the old "age play" roleplaying thing, though of course we didn't know it at the time. My big problem, as a novice top, was overlooking the pleading and protestations of a close friend while administering the punishment he so dearly desired. He'd stick his butt up the air in anticipation of the next paddle whack, but at the same time he was crying (or at least pretending to), and begging me for to stop in a painfully sincere voice. Sentimental sap that I was, I simply couldn't bear down and give him the long, hard paddling he really wanted.

Of course, the simple answer to our dilemma was the good old safeword. Alas, this was twenty years ago, and we knew nothing of such erotic esoterica. In the end we drifted apart and after college I moved to another state. When last seen my old friend was in a vanilla marriage (at least to all outward appearances, but we know how that goes) and had a couple of kids. I continued with my obsession, and eventually gained the knowledge needed to make spanking relationships work much better. But that's another story.