Buried Treasure

Lately I've been attempting to declutter our basement storage area. My routine is to deal with one box at a time, examining the contents and sorting the items into keep, toss or give away piles. It's quite a lot of fun actually, opening a dusty cardboard box and discovering long-forgotten treasures. Sometimes I am delighted to discover cherished keepsakes I haven't seen for years; other times I wonder why I bothered to keep them.

Last weekend I chose a box on a lower shelf, opened it, and began to unwrap the articles inside. Among some pottery ornaments that I had created nearly thirty years ago, I found this wooden paddle.

The ornaments were made at a time when we did not have a large assortment of pervertables, so I knew it hadn't been used for spanking. Then I remembered that potters - like spankers - used common household items in their craft. Garlic presses, cheese graters, serrated and paring knives, pastry wheels, and wooden paddles were all useful for creating art out of clay. This paddle had been used to slap the clay to create a flat surface.

At first I didn't recognize it. It came from a time when we didn't use a large assortment of implements, so it wasn't a spanking toy. Because it was stored along with the pottery, I finally remembered that its purpose had been to pat the soft clay and flatten it while creating free form objects. (Potters, like spankers, used common household items in their craft. Garlic presses, cheese graters, serrated and paring knives, pastry wheels, and wooden paddles are all useful for creating art out of clay.) Now it would have a new lease on life. It felt somewhat light, but was wide enough to be worth trying. I dusted it off and put it aside to take upstairs, then finished sorting the contents of the box.


When I appeared in the bedroom for our regular spanking date later that day, I brought my new - or should I say old - toy to Ron for his inspection, and he agreed to add to to the implements he had already chosen: a hairbrush and a beach paddle. Ron and I were pleasantly surprised by its effectiveness. Once I was bent, bare-bottomed, over the bed, he laid the paddle gently against my right cheek, then drew it back and smacked briskly. He repeated the process on my left cheek, taking aim, then attacking. He repeated the one-two move several times, and I was quite happy with his slower, gentler approach. The paddle stung, but not excessively, and made a decent amount of noise, which Ron always enjoys.

The hairbrush and the beach paddle had their turns on my reddened backside, and noise seemed to be the order of the day. The latter makes a huge sound, and Ron didn't hesitate to turn up the volume. But in general, his tempo was slower and more methodical than usual, although when it was the new paddle's turn, he added a few syncopated rhythms for his -and my - entertainment and amusement.

When we were done, Ron tossed the three implements into his toybox, with the potter's paddle on top. I'm glad he thinks it's a keeper. Who knows what other treasures I might find the next time I go exploring in the basement.