After showering, I went back to my dorm room and got dressed. I had class in 20 minutes. Needed to hustle to eat something and get to class on time. The class was a biology lecture class. About 300 students. I managed to find a seat in the back of the auditorium. My mind had been wandering since Sharon left this morning. As embarrassed as I had been by her questions about me getting spanked as a kid, I kept coming back to the image of her getting spanked over a parent's knee with her skirt flipped up and her panties pulled down. She hasn't described exactly what happened but the little that she said got me turned on as I sitting in class. Impossible to pay attention to the lecture. My boner was hard as a rock in my jeans. Enough that I untucked my shirt to cover my bulging crotch. There were students sitting next to me on both sides. I hoped that they were paying more attention to the lecture than I was. It wasn't weird to be that turned on thinking about being in bed with Sharon last night or what I thought that she was about to do to me this morning when my roommate walked in on us.

But it was weird to have an image of her getting her butt spanked turning me on. I wasn't thinking of her as a young teen getting spanked. I was thinking of her as she was now. 20 years old. With a seriously cute butt. Somehow, the story of what Sharon said was her last spanking and how she looked today got mixed together because how she looked today was the only mental picture that I had of her. She still like to wear short skirts when she didn't wear jeans. It was easy to get a flash of her panties when she bent over. Which she did a lot, when I thought of it. Not as much in public but when we were together. She was uninhibited that way. Made sure that I saw her dressed and undressed in flattering turn-on ways. She was the same way with me, I realized. Like her undressing me first last night so that I was nude before she started getting undressed. That was a first that way. I remembered that she sometimes kept me nude after we screwed or woke up in the morning as long as she could. She would usually be nude too but she might make an excuse to put her panties on and discourage me from putting even my underpants on until she was ready. For me, that was not a problem. Although sometimes I wondered why she liked to keep me from getting dressed. But when sex is involved, I realized that a boy can be talked into just about anything by a girl.

I was surprised when the bell rang for the end of class. I was still daydreaming in that one peculiar way. Still hard as a rock too. I waited until almost everyone in the back rows had left before I got up and covered my crotch with my notebook. I don't know that anyone would have noticed my tented jeans but I certainly felt self-conscious about walking to my next class with what felt like a huge boner. I couldn't shake the image of her getting her bare butt spanked with a hairbrush.

My next class was psychology. It was a basic course. Weirdly, the chapter that we were covering was about deterrence, mostly about deterring crime. Although the professor suddenly asked about how we students had been deterred as children from doing things that we shouldn't do. Some guy yelled, "got my ass spanked!". Which caused a lot of laughter.

The professor said, "yes, corporal punishment is used a lot in families and institutions like schools, but does it work? Did it work for you?" The same guy spoke up and said, "Nothing else seemed to work with me so definitely maybe". For another laugh.

"What makes corporal punishment different from abuse or assault?," the professor then asked. No one seemed to know. I know that I didn't. After seconds of silence, the professor provided the answer: "Ritual. "Think about it. Corporal punishment has a ritual. Other violence doesn't. One person punching another person in the face is just violence because there is no ritual. But spanking usually has a ritual. The child is bent over a parent's knee to be spanked. The student is bent over in a hallway to be paddled at school. The child usually has to get over the parent's knee and has to bend over in the hallway. The child submits to the ritual. Sometimes, there are other rituals to corporal punishment that involve submission. The child has to undress partly. The child has to stand in the corner after being spanked. The child participates in the ritual by following the parent's instruction or expectations about how the punishment will occur. A student knows that paddling occurs at school and understands what is about to happen and submits to the paddling. Spankings are almost always on the buttocks and not on other parts of the body where more serious injury might happen. If a child is struck in the face or on the head or punched in the stomach or beaten on the back, we would consider that abuse or assault. A crime. But because corporal punishment has rituals and expectations about what the person doing the punishment and what the child being punished must do, we permit it and even encourage it. It is the ritualistic infliction of pain without long-term injury. But does it deter misbehavior the way that we expect it too?"

The same student who had yelled out earlier had to have the last word, "It did for me. Until the next time." More laughter.

The bell rang. The professor had to raise his voice to be heard among the sounds of us packing up for the next class, "Next class. More discussion of the psychology of deterrence. And try not to get in trouble before then. Or else, there will be consequences!"

Which made me wonder: "Why was the idea of spanking suddenly such a turn-on?"