Hello thecrazylife: I'll share a story with you. (By the way, I'm an aging transgender person (MtF) who never transitioned. I've always just lived a more-or-less normal male existence.) I was spanked by my father. He would take off his belt, double it over, & snap it at me before he spanked me with it.

There is one incident that is burned into my memory. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old, I would guess. I don't know what I had done. But my father had his belt off & he was snapping it at me, grinning & telling me to come out & take it like a man. I had managed to wedge myself between the headboard of my bed & the wall behind it. I was screaming for him not to spank me with his belt. I don't know if he actually spanked me that day or not. My memory stops with the picture I have of myself standing behind the headboard screaming & crying. A few years later, I guess my father decided I was too old to be spanked, so he quit. That was just in time for the bullies at school to decide that I made a great punching bag.

I've read in a variety of places recently that brain research is showing memories are not all that reliable. It's even possible to induce people to remember things that never happened. So is this memory real? I think it is... but I don't know. Please make of my story what you will...