While visiting my cousins over the holiday, I heard a new story about Aunt Frances ... a spanking story.

Our family has some wonderful spanking stories, one of which features Frannie chasing Cyndy and Craig around a table.

When Craig began to sob, Cyndy hollered, “Why are you crying? She hasn’t caught us yet?”

“Yeah,” blubbered Craig, “but it’s really gonna hurt when she does!”

And it seems that ... huh? What’s that? Some of you younger ones don’t know what spanking is? Hmmm. Well, I’m not at all surprised. Times have changed, and it has been a while since I’ve heard of anyone actually being spanked.

Let me explain:

Spanking is also referred to as “paddling,” and until recent times it was a form of corporal punishment traditionally performed by adult humans upon juvenile humans. It called for the punisher to apply a nonlethal level of pain-inducing blunt force to the hindquarters of the punishee.

Implements used to this end (sorry about that) ranged from the bare hand to a razor strap.

My father opted for a ping-pong paddle that spread the impact across a wide area. This caused no real physical trauma but generated a stinging effect and an impressive THWACK!

It was shock and awe because Dad wanted to get my attention more than anything else. That was ... the bottom line.

One rationale for spanking was, “If the Lord didn’t want me to spank it when you’re bad, He wouldn’t have made it as sensitive as it is, or as big a target!”

Although the Bible doesn’t actually say, “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” it does contain references to the need for disciplining children without abusing them.

Learning the difference between rightdoing (and its benefits — which have nothing whatsoever to do with rewards) and wrongdoing (with its self-destructive consequences) is a major part of our life-lessons.

Even animals are smart enough to correct their young, including a mother deer I watched lead her fawn into a field to graze.

Having eaten her fill, Mom walked away to the edge of the forest. She turned back several times to snort at the youngster, obviously telling him, “Come on! We’re through here! Let’s go!”

He paid no attention to her and kept eating.

After being ignored long enough, she trotted back into the field and bit him squarely on his hiney. He squealed, jumped into the air and scrambled to reach the woods ahead of her. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen ... but it worked.

Paddling was often executed in human schools with a device called a “paddle,” generally a piece of 2X4-inch lumber with a handle carved into one end — although yardsticks and rulers were sometimes used to impose quick-response discipline.

The slang term for a paddle was “the board of education,” and the mere sight of it on a teacher’s desk posed a potent deterrent. Put to use, it conveyed an unmistakable message to both the condemned and the witnesses.

A friend of mine once laughed at an elderly nun’s feeble attempts to paddle him in front of his schoolmates. “My father showed up the next day in her class,” he told me, “and I said, ‘Hey, Pop, what are you doing here?’ It didn’t take me long to find out!”

In our day of modern enlightenment, a timely swat or two across the backside of a miscreant child has become equated in some eyes with real child abuse (which is despicable and probably should be punished by public flogging).

Do it in a store or some other public place, and a member of the self-appointed Fanny Police is apt to sic the real cops on you.

Corporal punishment is said to generate anger and humiliation in a youngster, and to contribute to the breaking of his spirit. Based on what parents, teachers and even kids tell me, some of the little (expletive deleted)s probably should have their spirits broken.

Example A: I told my mother to shut up only one time. Never even considered it again.

Example B: While in first grade, I tried to strangle one of my classmates. Why, I don’t remember, but I had him on the floor and was throttling him when the teacher grabbed me and cured my hams. Miss Knott made me angry, humiliated me and dampened my spirit, but she may also have kept me off death row. Not once to this day, despite having an occasional urge to do so, have I ever tried to strangle another living creature.

Of course, spanking isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, the mere prospect of retribution is sufficient.

Grandmother Goldsworthy visited what seemed like capital punishment upon my little cousins and me. She made us sit motionless on the couch for 20 minutes, looking straight ahead, with our arms folded and both feet on the floor, and NO talking. None of us ever dared find out what atonement would be demanded of one who disobeyed.

OK. Now, do you know what spanking is? Good. Let’s get back to Aunt Frances.

While teaching in a one-room school at Beryl, W.Va., she found it necessary to apply the board of education to one of her students.

He neglected to tell her that he had a few strike-anywhere kitchen matches in his back pocket. Frannie gave him a couple of vigorous swats, and the seat of his pants burst into flames.

Today, this would make the front page of every newspaper in the country. Back then, it could only have imbued her with an almost supernatural aura of power and might.

“That Miss Frances is somethin’ else,” the kids would have whispered to each other. “She can set your (beast of burden) on fire with that paddle!”