A School Paddling Surprise

I got lucky when I started teaching. Douglas Kearns Middle School opened the fall after I got my teaching certificate. I was able to get a job there, but only under unusual circumstances. I was certified to teach Math. However, in my drive to stay in good shape, as well as wanting to get better at helping Ben’s soccer team, I took 11 gym (or coaching) classes. Oops. I was qualified to be a gym coach.

Kearns was the second middle school in Bransom. It was closer to our house, so it was pretty convenient. I could even give Ben, who was 12 and in seventh grade, and Jason, who was a year older, a lift on bad weather days. While I’d never thought about being a coach (well, not seriously - I was afraid the position might provide too much temptation), I was willing to take it.

Because they were opening a new school, and because they were moving sixth grade back to middle school, they were changing some positions and trying to fill others. They were using one of the football coaches to handle some of the elementary gym classes for the older students. In the meantime, I was going to be teaching first period math, when they did seventh grade athletics. I would be spared a home room, because I had gym classes in second, third, and fourth period. Then I was allowed to skip most of the lunch hall monitoring, to give me time to shower and change before my next class. Not only that, but they even gave me fifth period as my free period, allowing me to take it easy when I wanted. Then I had sixth, seventh, and eighth as more math classes. To make up for being dragooned into coaching, I was even given one of the sixth grade advanced classes for my first period.

All the classrooms were pretty nice, but I had one near the gym. It was just down the hall and upstairs, so it was very convenient. It also had a nice view over the side, so I had a view that missed the parking lot and the football field.

As in most schools, most of the teachers were female. As a matter of fact, the teachers on either side of me and across from me were female. That was actually great for me, because district policy prohibited a teacher of one gender spanking a student of another. We were also supposed to have witnesses to all paddlings. I know there were cases where a teacher would skip the required witness for one reason or another (and I ended up making a fairly regular habit of it myself). Because of the layout, and because I quickly gained a reputation for being rather effectively strict, I was often called upon by those female teachers to handle their rowdy boys. (And believe me, if you don’t remember, there are a LOT more rowdy 11- to 14- year old boys in the world than there are girls.)

I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it happened during the first six weeks of the first semester I was teaching. Don’t even ask me what I was teaching, but I was lecturing the little nippers about the newest exciting stage in their mathematical career, when there was a tap on my door. Mrs. Rowe stuck her head into the door and made a quick paddling gesture with her hand, while raising an eyebrow, giving me a good idea of what she wanted.

"Go ahead and start working on problems one through twenty. I’ll be back in a minute."

When I reached the door, Mrs. Rowe informed me that she had a young man who needed a little help getting his class clown act under control. I had started school with two paddles since I was teaching sixth grade and their can be a huge difference in the size in the kids. I’d added two more when I realized that I would be helping the nearby ladies with their problem children. Actually, they had five paddles in the coach’s office, since we handled all three grades there, with boys from 11 to 14 - or 15, if you assume there were at least a few holdbacks. That’s the reason I wanted to see the boy before I picked a paddle. I stepped into the hall and found myself stunned.

"Hi, Jack."

"I told you that you have to call me Mr. Wells when we’re at school, Ben."

My cute, brown haired, freckle faced little brother blushed a bit. "Sorry, I forgot."

"And do you want to tell me what you’re doing out here in the hall, when I was supposed to be dealing with some clown who’s disrupting Mrs. Rowe’s class?"

He blushed darker. "That was me. Are you going to tell Patrick?"

"Do you two know each other?" Mrs. Rowe interrupted.

"He’s my brother," we both echoed each other.

Her eyes went wide. "But your last names…"

"We’re step-brothers," I explained. "His mom is married to my dad, but we live together."

"Do you want me to get someone else to… uh…?"

"No, problem. It won’t be the first time I’ve paddled him." I turned to my little brother. "Do you remember where the paddles are?" He nodded. "Go get the big one."

Mrs. Rowe and I watched as Ben shyly made his way across my classroom. Ben very rarely did anything shyly, but I think the idea that the other kids were watching him as he fetched the paddle made him a bit nervous. Since I was watching, I know that a couple of kids WERE taking surreptitious glances over their shoulders.

"All right, you guys. Do the problems, no talking, and you need to be looking at your books unless you want to be the next one out here."

They all developed a sudden interest in their homework. Ben, on the other hand, seemed even more embarrassed. He knew better than to let it slow him, though, and he quickly returned to the hall, holding the larger paddle.

The desks in my classroom were all the new kind - chairs with the desks attached and a basket attached underneath. However, I’d appropriated a couple of normal chairs. One of them was next to my desk, giving the students a place to sit while we tried to figure out why they couldn’t get the problems right. The other one sat next to the door and had a more interesting purpose - for me, anyway.

As Ben came through the door, I took the extra chair and pulled it into the hall. Then I took the paddle from him and began patting it against my left hand in a way that I knew was absolutely entrancing - and horrifying. I watched Ben as his eyes followed the movement of the paddle back and forth.

"Do you know why you’re here?"

"Because I was disrupting class."

I turned the chair so that the back was away from the wall.

"Bend over there… Wait, everything out of your back pocket and untuck your shirt."

I watched as he pulled his shirt loose from his jeans. It was strangely exciting, even though I saw him in his briefs every day and had seen him naked more times than I could count over the years -all the way back to changing his diaper. As soon as his shirt was untucked, he removed his wallet and comb from his back pockets and dropped them into the seat of the chair.

"Now, over the chair and grab the front legs."

He gave me a rather despairing look, then turned to face the wall and bent across the back of the chair. I flipped his shirt tail up, revealing the waistband of his Fruit of the Looms, then patted his back pockets, to be sure that everything was really out of his jeans. After that, I placed the paddle against his rear, gave it a couple of pats to make sure I had it lined up correctly, then pulled it back.

Ben tensed up as the paddle raised up, but it was in vain, because I’d turned to Mrs. Rowe. She was watching in a general way, but mostly turning away. I held up three fingers to her. Two was the usual, and she shook her head, then shrugged and nodded. Usually the teacher bringing the complaint decided, but I guess she bowed to my authority over him.

I lined the paddle up again, without quite touching him, then cocked it back and let fly. I wasn’t using a full swing position - it was a kid’s butt, not a baseball and I wanted to correct him, not abuse him. Even then, it sounded like a rifle went off as the paddle connected with his rear. Ben’s shoulders went tense and his head came up, though he didn’t release his grip on the chair legs. I gave him a moment as he visibly relaxed, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying to ease the sting.

When he was settled, I lined the paddle up again, a bit lower this time. I think I heard a slight moan as he felt the paddle line up. Again I patted it against his rear, then pulled back. This time there was no hesitation - the paddle came up and shot right back down. He cried out this time, a muffled yelp that was a bit more than a moan. Ben was used to my dad’s belt and me spanking him with the paddle - both on his naked rear, but this was something entirely different. It’s not that Ben had never been paddled in school before, but not so often that he’d grown used to it. That showed as he shuffled, trying to ease the pain without breaking position.

"One more, Ben. Just hold still and we’ll get it over with."

It took a moment, but he stilled himself. I put the paddle down against the seat of his jeans again and heard a definite groan this time, as my little brother realized the last swat was going to catch the top of his legs as well as the lowest part of his bottom - the place where’d he’d be trying to rest his weight for the rest of the school day. He didn’t protest or try to stop me, though.

The final swat smacked down quickly enough, once again resounding in the empty hall like a firecracker, followed just as quickly by a short but distinct yelp, then by a low, pained moan.

"Stand up, Ben."

He did. His face was red and his eyes were watery, though he wasn’t crying. He stood slowly, trying to battle against the burning heat that was the center of his attention right then. As soon as he was on his feet, he stepped over to me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and rested his head against my shoulder.

"Ben, you’re really not supposed to hug the teachers," I said in a half-joking manner. He didn’t care much, he just wanted his big brother to comfort him for a minute. Mrs. Rowe looked away as I dropped my free arm around his shoulders.

After a minute, he stepped away. I looked at Mrs. Rowe and she was satisfied, so I handed Ben my paddle. "There’s a bathroom pass on the back of it, Benj. Go wash your face, tuck in your shirt, and get some water, then bring it back to me. Don’t play around, though - I’ll be timing you."

As he turned to go, Mrs. Rowe stepped back into her classroom, but I paused to watch him walk stiffly down the empty hall towards the boy’s room.

Ben returned the paddle too me in good time, but I had a student at my desk and another waiting, so there was no question about whom the punished student had been. It didn’t take long for word to get around the school. Even though that wasn’t the first paddling that I gave (about the fourth, I think), it was the one that seemed to start my reputation. For one thing, one of the students in my class that period was a neighbor of ours. I never knew him well, but he and Ben played together some times, so he knew that I was Ben’s big brother, and the idea that I’d paddled my own brother at school seemed to say to the kids that I’d spank anyone (which was funny to me - it seemed like I'd be more likely to spank him than anyone else). Beyond that, Ben mentioned it to a couple of his friends and the comparison to my home technique (which at least one of them had experienced), was positive. ‘It’s a lot worse at home, but he still does a really good job here. I didn’t know he knew how to do a school paddling,’ was the quote I heard. Of course, one of Ben’s friends later asked me if they teach paddling in college.