Smacking

I grew up in a time when smacking was common and indeed, I was smacked on occasion.  My brother was smacked at least daily and often caned at school as well.  He found conforming to society's rules, well, difficult.  Well when I say smacked, the word today would be beaten.  My father preferred to use a strap when doling out his corporal punishment partly because said brother was known to laugh at beatings that did not physically hurt.  I can say that these beatings did us no harm, though in my brother's case they probably didn't do him much good either.

Our punishments often came with a warning.  "Go get me my strap!"  And the miscreant would indeed scuttle off to find this instrument of torture, even the aforementioned brother.  One time, my sister realising that she was in deep trouble, used this warning to prepare.  Ostensibly looking for "the strap" she raced to our bedroom and put on every pair of underpants that she owned and probably a pair or two of mine.  I think that she may have had to change into track pants as well, now that her jeans no longer fit.  Then out she came for her punishment.  She felt as though she was waddling as the layers of underpants did not allow her legs to touch.  She bent over for her beating, taking care to keep her hands out of the way.  A strap across your hands hurts far more than one across the butt.  The strap came down and her ruse had worked.  She barely felt it.  She felt an urge to laugh but stifled it.  The strap came down again, and again no pain.  The strap came down a third time and my sister let out a loud and distressed wail.  There was perhaps a fourth hit and the wailing continued and then my sister was allowed to run to her bedroom.

Once in her bedroom with the door shut tight, the wailing turned into hysterical laughter.   She began peeling off all the protective layers.

"Why are you laughing?"  we whispered at her.

"It didn't hurt at all,"  she answered.

"But, you were crying,"  we said.

"Yes, when I realised that normally I would have been crying by now I had to fake cry.  Otherwise I would have got caught.  I was so scared anyway.  When the strap came down, it seemed to thud like he was hitting a cushion.  I thought that he'd be able to tell for sure.