stevenr:
I hated to be paddled personally, but found others puddling's fascinating.
Is that being turned into a puddle of tears from being paddled? Don't know if that was intentional but it seems like a highly descriptive word choice.
Personally, I spent several years in English schools long ago. We had a particularly frightening math master who indiscriminately caned both boys and girls for trivial (or non-existent) offenses, so the cane has never had much appeal to me as an author, reader, or viewer.
lesliejones:
I also like a small martinet.
I find the martinet fascinating, simply because of its design, and have tried to write a few martinet stories since it seems to be underrepresented on this site. The same holds true with the tawse; you wonder who had the bright idea to slice leather up to get multiple stripes out of a single swing.
My grandmother was a proponent of the switch as an attitude adjuster; thankfully she never got the idea for a birch like seems popular in Scandinavia.