What's your favourite implement?

What's your favourite implement to write about? Read about? Give? Receive? (For those of you who give and/or receive for fun in your adult lives)
And why?

My favourites:
1. To receive: hand. Second-fav, belt. (Because both of them have the potential to feel light and erotic, or alternatively brutal and barbaric, depending on how hard we're going for here.)
2. To give: wooden hairbrush. (Because it has a very high effect to effort ratio. Yeah, hurts more than you thought, doesn't it? That first-time yelp of surprise never gets old...)
3. To write and read about: same as above. (Because, well... it's what I know. And when I read, I like to be able to easily imagine what it's supposed to feel like. However, I also enjoy good descriptions of what it feels like with some object I'm not familiar with, so there's that too.)

I've had a fascination with the belt, ever since finding out (to my total horror) that my best friend and her siblings got the belt for misbehaviour. Her parents were literal hippies, who seemed like total pushovers and sweethearts to me, but apparently when they brought the hammer down, their kids literally got their butts whipped. I was so curious, appalled, intrigued, etc that it's stayed with me ever since. When I spent time in the midwest, I found out it was the standard implement for farm kids in their teens, and heard a bit more about the subjective experience of it.

Also, the birch, from discovering The Pearl at far too young an age ...

The cane although not one with a dayglo red plastic handle. Elegant and severe just like my ideal headmistress!

Yeah, sometimes it's the people you least expect. I'm sure all our neighbours thought my mom beat me and my siblings at home, based on the way she barked at us impatiently all day long - but she never did. One of my friends' mom, though, was the sweetest woman, always a kind word for all the kids, always the first to give someone a hug when they fell down and got hurt - she was everyone's mom for the whole neighbourhood.

Then I found out she whipped her kids with the same leather strap she used on their dog. Sometimes she whipped the dog in public (nobody thought that was a big deal back then), but her kids only at home, I guess. That made me feel weird about her after that.

There are so many factors here! I have a thing about the birch, probably because it was still seen as the "ultimate punishment" when I grew up. Also, the generic Norwegian word for spanking is "ris", which literally means a bundle of twigs, and is derived from the last half of the Norwegian word for birch rod, "bjerkeris".

I think my favorite is still the wooden paddle. It was the dominant correctional implement of my childhood, at least at school. If you wanted to see a class get deathly quiet, just take a misbehaving boy, or girl to the hall and paddle them, the classroom got so quiet you could hear the proverbial pin drop. For girls it was extremely embarrassing, for boys it was like a badge of honor, we'd argue over who gave the hardest licks, and since every teacher had a paddle and used it, along with the principal, there was no shortage of adults to debate about their butt blistering skills. I started First Grade in 1965 and graduated High School in 1977, and in those days in my home town it was very difficult to get through all 12 years without having at least a few meetings with the board of education. Even my favorite stories tend to be centered around school and students being paddled.

It's good to have variety, but my favourite has to be the hand. It produces a wonderful sensation, and a great sound, and its unique design allows it to be cupped to match the curvature of the buttocks. I've been caned a few times, and while I like having the marks to show for it, I don't enjoy the actual experience at all - too sharp and stingy.

I think that the jokari paddle is a very effective and yet not overly severe implement. In my experience, it leaves less marks but still results in a very sound punishment.

My two favorites are the strap and the wooden paddle. I've used both and perhaps also from childhood such as stevenr pointed out. We are very close in age. For me first grade was 1960 and I graduated HS in 1973. However in California, paddling in schools (at least in public) was done away with by the time I entered HS. In Jr. High (now called Middle School) boys got it but girls didn't. We also knew the teachers who gave the hardest swats just as stevenr mentioned. In my early days at a private religious school (First grade, 1960) both boys and girls got it. I remember a girl (Jane) called up to the front of our first grade class. She got maybe 3-5 strokes across backside of her dress with a wooden pointer, which teachers used back then to point to things on the chalk board.

Anyway, stories involving teen girls getting the strap or paddle which is obvious from my short (letter type) stories that appear here.

It's hard for me to pick one all-time favorite, but these three are at the top of my list:

1. Switch - I didn't get a chance to experience a switching until I was an adult, but this option has several attractions that for me. For one thing, I always find myself amazed that something that doesn't look as threatening as many other implements can sting so much. Other things that I like about switches include the scary whooshing sound they make, that fact that they are light enough to be used on the upper thighs as well as the backside, and the lovely marks they leave. Switches also make the top of my list, because they seem to be my wife's "go-to" implement on the rare occasions when she's given me a serious punishment spanking.

2. Hairbrush - This is a sentimental favorite because it was my mom's implement of choice when I was growing up. During my teen years when I was "too old to be spanked" by my mom and didn't have a spanking partner, I found hairbrushes to be a handy option for self-spanking. Strangely enough, my wife wasn't familiar with the use of hairbrushes for spanking since she grew up outside the US. In our years together, though, she's put them to good use on many occasions. In my experience, hairbrushes are less likely than a switch to leave marks, but due to their weight, they're more likely to cause residual soreness.

3. Feather duster - Although this isn't a typical implement in the West, it's something commonly used in China and other Asian countries. If you Google "feather duster spanking," you'll find many first-hand accounts from feather duster victims, videos, etc. This is another implement I didn't experience until I was an adult, but it's one that I'm well acquainted with now. The model we started out with was made in China, and it had a fairly rough-hewn bamboo handle. At some point, we replaced it a more more elegant (but inexpensive and equally effective) model from IKEA. I'm not sure what kind of wood is used for the handle of the IKEA version, but it's very smooth and well-finished. For me, being spanked with a feather duster offers a nice mix of sensations. It isn't as "stingy" as switch or as "thuddy" as a hairbrush. If used vigorously it will leave marks (like a switch) and cause quite a bit of residual soreness (like a hairbrush).