Mindset of the Discipline/Punishment Spanking

 As a result from reading, writing, and analyzing that I am doing as part of  Missy's Tell Me About Submission Reflection Series, I am realizing that for me, much of it fits under question number 2 regarding  submissive growth.  All of the above plus talking with others has let my mind open up and has lead me to the following personal revelation that I want to share with you below:

Many have had spanking on our minds since we were young. Who knows why certain images or memories that we didn't understand made our tummies flip as such young kids.  As adults, some of us seek this out while others suppress it. Many of us turn spanking into fun, some of use it as erotic activity, some for pain, for stress relief, discipline and some for punishment.  I'm sure I left some possibilities out.

When spanking comes in the form of the fun, the erotic, and the play part, all of that, to me, involves the use of one's imagination.  The spanking is whatever one's brain wants to turn it into. Maybe a guy or gal has made a scene out of it with lots of forethought as he/she imagines what it will entail.  (Storm and I haven't tried this yet, but our wheels are turning!)  Also, instead of fantasy or as an addition to it, we may just

automatically be turned on by the feeling of impact since our bums are near our sex organs and nerves and all that.  Alternatively, for me, when it comes to a discipline/punishment spanking, the whole thing has to be real in its origins whether it eventually leads to sex between Storm and me or not.  I can fantasize all I want when we are making love about the things that we might do or have already done or recall certain kinky dom things he has said to me over the years, but I cannot at all when it comes to a discipline spanking.  I think I finally figured out at least one component as to why -- all of you experienced gals who know I will have some other theory 6 months from now can just zip it. Ha! 

 I started thinking back to what most of us knew about spanking when we were young - it was a punishment.  In my elementary years, a teacher swatting kids with a paddle was fairly common. I was never the subject of such punishment, but I was a witness to it, in part.   I had sort of a fearful fascination of the whole atmosphere - knowing as a pupil that my classmate was heading for trouble when he somehow did not recognize this himself because he kept pushing it. We would all watch as the teacher got mad at the student. Our eyes would widen, his verbal warnings would buzz around in our little brains. My heart would start pounding in my ears and my tummy would do this a little flip.  We found ourselves holding our collective breath as the classroom went dead silent except for that slow fed-up/you're-gonna-get-it slide of the teacher's desk drawer -- you know that thing of wonderment that we imagined certainly held the school's top secrets and other things like confiscated toys such as super balls and jacks of years past, his favorite brand and flavor of gum, 37 ketchup packages stolen from the cafeteria, and the legal record of his actual first name.  He reached in to grab his weapon of ass destruction.  He had at least 2 paddles.  If he chose the one with the holes, I feared the kid was gonna get propelled all the way into the gymnasium.  In the few seconds that the teacher made his decision, the senses of the rest of us were on high alert in silent anticipation. We could detect the lingering nauseating scent of hours old mayonnaise dried on Ham Sandwich Kid's shirt front, in the corners of his mouth, and under his fingernails. Moms didn't know or care about ice packs back then.  You either got peanut butter and jelly or took the risk of salmonella with some kind of lukewarm lunch meat and mayo or bologna and mustard.  Those fools ended up missing the garbage can after lunch and threw up all over the floor.  We prayed for the janitor to arrive, but often they would just pour this sawdust type stuff over it and we'd have a hard time differentiating for the rest of the day between the odor of barf and that of Ham Sandwich Kid.  Our eyes flicked back to the teacher angrily standing up in his chair, paddle in hand. 

 We found ourselves internally restless though we dare not move.  Suddenly we were overcome with thirst and longing for a classroom exit to the ice cold water fountain -- my favorite part of that being a line of antsy, dancing, fussing children waiting for their turn to stand on the step stool in front of the big water fountain, finally make it there, only to have some toothy kid in line start yelling, "Save some water for the fish!" to get you to hurry and make their turn happen sooner rather than later.  But, no such luck right then because that boy was in the hallway now with the teacher.  Suddenly, all our thoughts came to a halt as we heard the lightning THWACK! and its echo in the hallway.  We waited to exhale our breath because sometimes there were 2 swats.  We'd slowly let out the trapped air when we'd see the kid slink back into the classroom.  We'd watch everything in reverse as order was restored by the teacher's definitive closing of his drawer to put away the paddle.  Thunk.  Well, that was the end of that. 

See? No imagination necessary to the build up and delivery of that kind of spanking. That's how it was every time.  I didn't know that what I was feeling was at least partially sexual in nature because my brain just was too innocent to make that connection.  But many years later, becoming sexually active somehow triggered some of those memories for me.  From anticipation through completion, the punishment/discipline spanking has to be real and serious in nature. 

Here's the second thing that just occurred to me as I was writing this. I was in 5th grade when this happened the most often. If you hadn't already noticed the pronouns, the teacher that spanked the most in the whole school was male and this never occurred to me until now.  Maybe it is much more common presently for teachers of the younger kids to be male, I don't know the statistics, but in my elementary school back in the late 70's and early 80's, he was the only male teacher.  Male teachers were plentiful in high school, but it was rare in grade school.  This teacher was strict, male, had large hairy hands, was clean - he smelled like soap and coffee, and he was masculine. He was a major authority figure in our lives for almost an entire year - one where some of my classmates were starting puberty, but for others of us, like me, it would be another 2 years until I started noticing physical changes in my body.  My "self" was still forming and thus impressionable. And, no, I do not have a teacher-student spanking fantasy. I was not attracted to my teacher.  I wasn't repulsed by him either, I just didn't think of him as anything other than my teacher that was a man and he often used spanking to discipline in his classroom. 

Our dynamic is very much one in which we recognize that our male and female selves have stark differences.  For example, his physical strength compared to mine.  When he spanks me, for us and for now, it isn't the pain itself that I seek or that Storm seeks to give to me. (Fine if you and yours do, and this may change for us or elements of that might already be there.)  But, right now, I want to feel the differences between us. I want to feel his authority, and for him to grow in his exercising of it and me submitting to it.

 Windy, don't you feel a bit stupid, humiliated, humbled, by that?  I would only feel stupid if I when I expressed my submissive desires to my husband he would have rejected them.  Never, ever has he done that. As far as the humiliation goes with a discipline spanking, yes, although not erotic in the moment, it can definitely result in erotic expression toward one another afterwards.  And humbled in a submissive way, yes, I feel that, too, willingly putting myself under his authority.  But, I am learning that apparently that is often what some  D/s feelings are about.  And there's no shame in that.  Or is there?  ;)