I was 16 years old when I suffered one of the most humiliating spankin's of my life, and never minding what today's so-called experts holler about corporal punishment, my spankin' worked. What I got tanned for that afternoon 20 years ago, I never got caught doing again because my mama didn't raised no fool. I wasn't about to give my daddy a reason to punish me the same way a second time, which means he was obviously right to paddle my behind the way he did – though you won't never hear me telling him that today!

How it came to pass started the way things usually do with boys that age: in other words, with no thought at all, just a need to follow my hormones. I got up that warm Mississippi morning and dressed like I always did back then in my wife beater, my drawers, and my blue jean cut-offs. I stuffed my flat teenage belly with one of my mama's good southern breakfasts, and then I set to berrying for the day. I loved her strawberry cream meringues and I knew the perfect strawberry patch just ripe for the picking.

The moment I set out in the woods – making sure to go in a separate direction from my little sister Ginny and my brother Roy – I remember being in a great mood. It hadn't been that long that our family had moved back to the South after living over three years in Pennsylvania and right then, I was feeling especially fine about it. I didn't mind that our home town had a population of less than 4,000 souls instead of the 77 times that that existed in Pittsburgh. I liked being a country boy again where space to roam was both safe and plentiful, traffic was non-existent, and the air was clean. Better still, everyone knew me and no one looked at me twice anymore when I called my parents 'Mama' and 'Daddy'. Of course, it was a pain sometimes having so many adults looking out for us kids and minding other peoples' business, but I reckoned I could live with that as I swung my bucket on the way to the berry patch.

Thinking about these changes, though, got me thinking about the friends I'd left behind, and that soon got me comparing the gals I used to like up in Pittsburgh with the ones I was getting to know again in Pearl River. It wasn't but two seconds after that that Lucille Newell invaded my thoughts, broke me out in a sweat, and got my jeans tenting permanent, setting me squarely on the road to ruin where Daddy was waiting for me at the other end.

If you ain't guessed it by now, I had a serious hankering for Lucille.

She was a year older than me and extremely pretty, and she had the chestiest titties a boy my age had ever seen. Her sisters Pauline and Raylene were younger than her and not as outstanding yet, but they were cut from the same cloth, of that there was no doubt. I knew this because I spied on them almost as much as I spied on Lucille – especially after supper when it was growing late and most teenagers in our town were supposed to be getting ready for bed. I'm slightly ashamed to admit it now, but after I'd snuck out my own window, sprinted over to the Newell house, and climbed their family trellis, I would expose myself in the dark outside their bedrooms. I'd touch my willy in secret while I watched their day clothes coming off, my middle leg pulsating in my palm as baby pink panties with matching bras came into view.

I was only 16 years old remember, so once my mind strayed in this direction, it didn't take me more than half a second to drop my empty bucket on the spot then run straight to their house a full mile west of my own.

When I got there, I truly thought God was blessing me.

I wasn't expecting Lucille to be in her room at that hour, much less undressing just for me, but there she was, doing exactly that. Her clothes were being peeled off one by one in preparation for a shower then a trip to town, and my jeans felt a lot tighter as I watched a blouse, a brassiere, some shorts, and a creamy pair of beige panties drop to the floor. I watched her stand before a full-length mirror and admire the contours of her sexy body, preening this way and that while she cupped her boobies to give them a lift then sucked in her belly and let it out.

I couldn't see much of her pussy (even though I tried) but it fascinated me all the same. Most pussies did, hidden as they are behind thickets of wiry pubic hair while the sex organs of us men are forever out in the open. My organ was even more visible than most boys back then what with me always catching fevers and Mama always making sure I stayed shaved from head to toe to keep them short. Spying on Lucille, I kind of wished her short and curlies were my own, but that was only until she distracted me by pouting at her reflection then practising all these come-hither expressions.

Right then and there I fished myself out completely to make the stroking easier, even though a rooster would have shown more horse sense than to do what I was doing out in broad daylight. From inside the house, Lucille's granny, Miz Leona, spotted my bare legs halfway up her trellis, and when she marched outside to investigate, you can bet she wasn't none too pleased to look up and see my plump, hairless balls mere feet above her head. I barely got in one good jerk to my willy before she screeched my name and paddled me down with her broom, and then that doggone woman chased me clear to the tree line while I struggled to pull up my clothes.

I didn't return home for ten hours.

I knew Miz Leona would tell on me, so I wasn't Johnny-on-the-spot about facing my daddy or his kind of music, but eventually, I got too hungry to stay away. I found my bucket, filled it to the brim with strawberries for Mama, then scuffed my bare feet in the direction of home, praying all the way for the house to be empty. If it wasn't, my aim was to sneak in through the mudroom, dump the bucket, then sidle upstairs, but sure enough, my kid brother confronted me outside with a grin before I could do that.

Roy and I got on like two peas in a pod most days, but when one of us was due a lickin', the other one purely enjoyed it. The look on his face right then told me he was really planning to enjoy my time over Daddy's knees!

“I hear tell you done gone and done it this time,” he gloated soon as he saw me. “You're in a heap o' trouble, boy!”

I thought to give him a piece of my mind but then reckoned it was better to try and act dumb.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Daddy's been waitin' on you.”

“What for?”

Roy laughed straight up.

“Like you don't know!”

“I don't!”

“Well, go 'round back and ask him then ... but I'd slip a book down the back of my britches first, if'n I was you. He's gonna cream your corn good!”

I didn't have a snappy retort to that, so I kept my yap shut and just trudged out back where my daddy was indeed waiting for me.

His thick brows drew together when he saw me rounding the corner, but he didn't get up from the straight back chair he was poached in. As he set aside his whittling, I fidgeted at the bottom of the stairs and forced myself to smile up at him.

“Hey, Daddy.”

My daddy didn't smile back.

“Evenin',” he greeted me without a hint of pleasure. “Where you been, son?”

“Nowhere special,” I lied. “Just ... just out a-ways berryin' for Mama.”

I held up my bucket as proof, but Daddy's focus didn't waver for a second. He kept right on staring at me hard.

“Uh huh, but that's not all you've been doin' since morning, is it?”

“Um, yessir. Yes, it is.”

“That's not what your mama heard from Miz Leona. You wanna try again?”

I set down my bucket and begged the Lord almighty for inspiration, my mind turning over one way and then the other to invent a safe excuse for my perverted behavior hours before. There wasn't one, of course, and my daddy knew it. His eyes darkened while his gaze narrowed down at me.

“Son, I'm asking you for the second time. Where were you?”

I wiped my sweaty palms against my shorts.

“Nowhere, Daddy, I swear I—”

“What were you doing, boy?”

“Nothing!”

Daddy studied me in silence for a moment then made his decision.

“All right, Joshua, if that's the way you want it.”

“But it's the truth!” I exclaimed even though we both knew it wasn't.

My daddy didn't argue further; he just crooked his index finger at me. “Come here, boy.”

I did the opposite of what he asked and took two steps back; both hands reaching behind me to cover my butter buns.

“No, Daddy! Why?”

“Don't rile me, son. You know the answer to that, I can see you do, so quit piddlin' around and let's get your whuppin' over with. If you don't want to talk about what you did or why, I won't force you, but I'll still whup you for it because it was wrong.”

“But—”

“Joshua, it was wrong and that's all there is to it. Now get on up here so I can take down your britches.” I looked at him helplessly while he turned to my younger brother and sister. They were dawdling nearby and grinning like fools, just waiting to see me get it, and they perked up the moment he addressed them directly. “Roy, you go fetch me your mama's hairbrush, and Virginia, you fetch me her spoon.”

There was no denying I was in for it bad then, if my backside was gonna feel both the brush AND the spoon, so the second Roy and Ginny galloped out of sight into the house, I shot my daddy the kicked puppy dog look. I was hoping he'd feel sorry for me and let me off the hook like he'd done the week before, but no way was Daddy gonna do that this time.

My mama didn't raise no fool, remember, so when he beckoned me again, his expression hardening by visible degrees the longer I tarried, I accepted the fact that I was plumb screwed. I dragged my feet closer to the porch, then inched my way up the steps, and as soon as I was in reach, Daddy grabbed my left wrist and pulled me closer. He set to work unbuttoning my jean shorts and then he yanked them down. Next came the drawers I was wearing and I turned nearabout as red as them strawberries in my bucket over yonder when my solid 4-inch willy bounced a bit then settled on jutting outwards like the walking plank off a seafaring ship. My willy always did that when I was about to get a lickin' (and my family had seen it many a time before) but that didn't make me feel any better. As Ginny skipped back out onto the porch with the spankin' spoon and Roy practically right on her heels toting a large old-fashioned hairbrush, I begged my daddy for at least a littlebitty smidgen of privacy. He sometimes whupped us within view of other people, but he'd never done it to me outside before (even though he'd threatened it) and I sure enough didn't want him to start now!

“Daddy, please. Can't we do this in the shed or in my room?”

Daddy completely ignored my fussing. He took what Ginny and Roy offered him then set them on the table beside the wood he'd been whittling earlier, and then he ordered me to bend over his knees. I obeyed, but I squiggled around like a 50¢ ladder for almost a minute once I was in place, trying to prolong the inevitable under the guise of getting comfortable. Daddy didn't rush me. He let me exhaust myself for two whole minutes until I finally settled down and then he cupped one cool bare cheek with his hot right hand.

“You have anything to say before I begin, son?”

I didn't – truly, I didn't – but my cussed silence only lasted for the first minute of my spankin', because after that, the pain refused to be denied any longer. I was getting it hard and fast from Daddy's right hand and I knew without actually seeing anything that my backside was turning colors more quickly than it ever had before. It was a safe bet that Roy would tease me in our room later for braying like a mule so soon, but just then, I didn't rightly care. Nearabout the sixty-second mark of my punishment, I threw both hands back and bellowed an apology.

“I'M SORRY, DADDY! I'M SORRY! I WON'T DO IT AGAIN!”

I was too late, of course; Daddy paid no attention to my carrying on at all. He stopped a moment to pin both my hands out of the way and then he went right on back to spankin' my behind.

“I'm sorry too, son,” he took the time to reply while he lit a fire in my teenaged caboose. “I'm sorry you got to be over my knee for the same dang thing I licked you for last time. A hard head makes a soft behind, son, and I warned you about this before, didn't I?”

I hollered a “YESSIR!” loud as I could, but Daddy wasn't listening to me one whit. He parted my cheeks then applied Mama's wickedy wooden spoon to the soft skin flanking my hole.

“Didn't I tell you I'd tan your hide right here in front of God and everybody if'n you shamed us again?”

I hollered another reply in the affirmative as he picked up the pace.

“You didn't believe me though, did you, son? You thought I was kiddin', that I was too nice a daddy to whup your hide out in public. Well, as you can see, boy, I wasn't kiddin' and I ain't too nice a daddy to give my boy what he needs when he needs it. Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, you're gonna learn to act like you got some raisin' if'n I have to paddle your behind every day this month and twice on Sundays to teach you a lesson. And I will do that, son. You can ...  mark ... my ... words.”

Every syllable Daddy uttered was punctuated by a lick of that evil wooden spoon, licks that got me bawling like a poddy calf long before he finished his speech. I couldn't hear him no-how by the end, of course, so he quit lecturing me and just tanned my backside with the spoon some more before switching to the hairbrush Roy had brought him.

From the first lick with that, I howled.

Each time he walloped me with that heavy hunk of wood over 3 inches across, 5 inches long and almost a full inch thick, I parted my lips, threw my head back, and bayed at the sky just the way you'd expect a 16-year-old Southern boy to do when his daddy is whupping the tar out of him. I was in such a state I didn't have a clue what kind of show I was putting on for my siblings, but Ginny told me about it later on and Roy took great delight in backing her up. Me? I didn't know and I didn't care. I bellowed over Daddy's knees and massaged my blistered behind for five straight minutes after my spankin' officially ended, and my chest was still hitching some when he helped me off his lap.

“Now, son, you face that wall and think about what you done to earn such a hard lickin', you hear?”

I heard. There wasn't no way I was gonna disobey my daddy at that point, so even once he'd gone into the house and wasn't breathing down my neck anymore, I stood exactly where he told me to and tried not to let my inner cheeks make contact with one another. Three minutes of Roy and Ginny's giggling, though, told me what I must look like from the rear, so I tried not to squat as much while I waited for Daddy to come back outside. The second he did, I sniffed and shot him another puppy dog look.

“Can I get dressed now, Daddy?”

Daddy shook his head. “No need for that, son. Miz Leona and her grand-daughters are on their way over here to get an apology from you and to see you got the tanning I promised her you'd get. If you pull your britches back up, you'll only have to take them down again once they get here.”

“But Daddy—!”

“Joshua, there ain't nothing you can say that'll change my mind, so you just hush up and turn on back around. Your punishment ain't finished yet.”

I did as I was told since I had no choice, but I was sick to my belly at what I was fixing to have to put up with once the Newell family walked into our yard. I knew there'd be no end to the snickering and the staring, and I was right.

When they showed up a half hour later and walked around back at Mama's urging I heard it all start up behind me. My wife beater didn't cover more'n the top of my crack, so they could see everything I'd gotten: the handprints, the spoon circles, and the paddle squares branding my backside every which-a-way, each one attesting to the fact that Daddy really had whupped me good.

I hoped Mama and Daddy wouldn't make me turn around and apologize face-to-face, but of course, that's exactly what they did. It didn't vex them at all that a certain part of my anatomy was still pointing straight out, and Miz Leona seemed to think it was right fitting for me to be shamed this way after I'd spied on her grand-daughter. Didn't none of them tell Lucille or her sisters to stop staring at my privates, so they all got a nice long look at the hair I didn't have – which means in church the next Sunday, there wasn't a single gal in the entire congregation whose eyes didn't stray to the crotch of my good pants at least twice – some of the men folk too.

Anyway, that's the story of one of the worst lickin's I ever got as a youngin. If any of y'all still reading this want to hear about some of the other ones I got, you just write and let me know.