Nine-year-old Jackie Stevens wondered why he always had to go shopping with his mother on summer days when there wasn't any school. After all, she never went anywhere that was fun, just to the dumb old grocery store, clothing stores and beauty parlor. And he had important things to do, like play with his train set or shoot basketball. Let her take Jimmy (his blond seven-year-old brother) along if she was worried or needed company. But, really, he, Jackie, was nine years old and able to look after himself now. There was just nothing that took the sparkle out of his big brown eyes so fast or hid the gleam of his perfect white teeth in a pout so surely as the announcement that he heard from his mother this morning:
"We have to go on our errands. Now, come on, Jackie, get in the car and go with us."
Invariably he answered, "Aw. Mama, do I have to?"
And invariably he was told: "Yes, you have to. Now come along and, stop wasting our time."
Not only did nothing go right today, but everything went from bad to worse. Everything in the grocery looked good to Jackie, only every time he suggested that his mother get any item, Jimmy would chirp up:
"Get it, Mommy, get it. Only, don't give any to Chubby-butt! He's too fat already! He needs to go on a diet!"
This, of course, was not altogether true. Jackie did have a chubby bottom, as well as a certain chubbiness in the face, chest, back, arms and legs, all of which complemented his soft, round belly. But his weight was not excessive for a boy of his height, and was all well-proportioned. He could not truthfully be called fat, but, like all boys of his build in the years before the development of that greater musculature attained with the onset of puberty, the thought of obesity horrified him, and taunts connected with it aroused the keenest resentment.
"Shut your trap, you little piss-pants!" Jackie retorted, shoving him and making him fall down on the floor.
"Waah! Jackie hit me!" Jimmy bawled...
Mrs. Stevens was furious. "How dare you hit your little brother! And how dare you use such filthy language!"
"But Mama," Jackie protested, "didn't you hear what he said about me?"
"That doesn't excuse what you did. Two wrongs don't make a right, and you did far worse by attacking him. You just wait till we get home: you're going to be punished good and proper; you're going to have your pants pulled down, and your underpants pulled down, and you're going to get a good, sound spanking on the bare bottom."
"No, Mommy, please!" Jackie pleaded, blushing furiously as he noticed that people in the store were beginning to turn and look at them.
"Don 't you argue with me , young man!" his mother answered. "I've a good mind to spank you right here in the store! Just. look what you did to Jimmy!" Turning to her younger son, she inquired, "Does it hurt, darling?"
"Yes, Mommy," Jimmy answered between sobs and sniffles (Jackie knew they were faked even though their mother evidently didn't. God, how he hated the little twerp for carrying on like that!). "It hurts a whole lot!" he continued, clutching his bottom.
"There, there, dear!" she said after a brief examination. "It'll be all right in a little while, maybe just a little bruise. But Mommy knows it hurts, and that was very bad of Jackie. And just look what he did to your new white shorts! We'll have to get that black skid-mark out as soon as we get home!"
"Aren't you gonna spank Jackie first?" Jimmy \inquired as they completed their shopping.
"I think I'll put a load in the washer first," she replied after a moment's thought.
As they passed through the check-out line, as they put the groceries in the car, and all during their ride home in fact, the conversation continued in this vein so unutterably humiliating to Jackie. Why was he born to live with this, he wondered? It seemed that, hardly a week of his life had gone by without hearing the words: "Take down your pants," -- "pull down your underpants"--"spanking on the bare bottom." And though there was a certain pleasant tingling in his bottom some time afterward, nonetheless Jackie did not look forward to being spanked. It hurt too much!.
Of course, it was fun to watch on the rare occasions when Jimmy got spanked: He liked. seeing his little brother bare-bottomed over a parental knee, liked watching those little bottom-cheeks turn red under a parental hand or hairbrush, loved hearing the little brat beg to be let off and promise to be a good boy. And in fact Jimmy was much more bearable to have around after the chastening effect of a good spanking. The only problem was, little Jimmy was so cute and little and adorable in his parents ' eyes, that he could practically get away with murder before Daddy and Momma were ever moved to decide that he had warranted a good cheek-chafing and would therefore get it. No, Jackie was the one who was always getting in trouble for his actions...
The car pulled to a stop in the Stevens' driveway.
"When we get in the house, Mommy's gonna spank you on your bare bottom," Jimmy gloated for the umpteenth time as Jackie sat sulking on the back seat. "And I get to watch, too, don't I, Mommy?" he asked for added confirmation.
"Of course, dear. Considering how he treated you, that's only fair."
"Nothing's fair around here," Jackie thought glumly.
However, fate did throw Jackie a small crumb of consolation. Even Jimmy was not to escape some measure of embarrassment that day. It so happened that, whenever Mrs. Stevens noticed any dirt or stains on the clothing that either of her boys had on just at the time when she was loading the machine for the wash-and-wear cycle, she invariably would insist that that boy remove that article then and there, before going to his room to put on a clean garment. This day was no exception: and as soon as they were in the kitchen, she made Jimmy take off his soiled white shorts and put them in with the rest of the wash. Only a few minutes later-- well after the machine had started the 45-minute cycle did they discover that in that load of laundry were all Jimmy "s other pants and his pajamas as well.
"Oh, well, dear," his mother said with a shrug, "just run around the house in your shirt and underpants for an hour or so. It won't hurt you."
"What about Jackie?" the younger boy asked.
"What about him?"
"Aren't you gonna spank him?"
"Of course," she replied seriously. "Now, Jackie, come here. Jimmy, you go get Daddy's big wooden hairbrush and bring it here."
"No, PLEASE DON'T, Mommy! Not with the hairbrush!" Jackie pleaded.
"Just drop your pants and be quiet!" she told him curtly.
"How far down?" Jackie asked piteously.
"All the way down," she told him, then added: "Your underpants can be just down."
Every family has its own idiomatic terms, and in case the preceding dialogue sounded perplexing, it should be explained that in the Stevens family a whole gradation of terms had evolved to specify the degree of preparation demanded for different. cases requiring corporal punishment. When the children were told to lower their pants and/or underpants, "down" or "just down" meant down to the point where the entire bottom was bare; "way down" meant to the knees; "all the way down" meant to the ankles; and"off" meant to remove the specified article of clothing entirely.
Therefore, in accordance with his mother's demand, Jackie unfastened his shorts, unzipped them, and let them fall to his ankles. Then he pulled his underpants down in the rear. However, before releasing the waistband at the top of his thighs, he begged, almost as an afterthought:
"Mommy, couldn't you just spank me on the seat of my underpants? It hurts just as much! I swear it does!"
"Stop it, Jackie," his mother admonished him, "You've been bad enough for one day already. Don't make things worse for yourself by telling fibs. I said you're going to get a bare-bottom spanking, and that's what it's going to be. Now get over my knee right now. And don't make it any harder on yourself than it already is."
Glumly resigned to his fate, Jackie did as she bade. Immediately he felt the grip of her left hand, placed. with the palm resting firmly on the small of his back. There was no need even to pull up the end of his yellow pullover shirt, since Jackie: had grown a bit in the year that he had had it, and now the shirt's hem barely reached the top of the boy's bottom-crack even when Jackie was standing up, Now his mother's hand descended with a resounding SMACK!
"OWW!" Jackie howled. The only reply to his protest was a rapid sequence of hard slaps on his bare behind. SMACK! SMACK! SMACK!
"Ow! Wow! Waahh!." Jackie bawled, now squirming and wriggling in agony. This only served. to aggravate his mother still further. Thereupon she wrapped her left arm around his torso in a vise-like grip... and with her right hand she picked up the hairbrush. The round little cheeks of Jackie's bottom already glowed pink from the smacking they had received from his mother's hand, but they were not nearly so red as they would be after six blows of the hairbrush. One did not even have to be standing in the kitchen to hear the following--in fact, standing anywhere in the house, the yard, or the neighboring yards, one would have heard quite clearly:
"Please, Mommy, it hurts enough!" SMACK! "OWW! Waahh!" SMACK! "OWW! OWWW!" SMACK! "WAAHH! I'll be a good boy!" SMACK! "OWWW! I promise I'll be the best boy you've ever seen!" SMACK! "No more, please! Sob! I promise I'll be good!"
Even after the last blow of the hairbrush, it was several seconds before Jackie ceased kicking his little legs in pain, and several minutes more before he ceased sobbing. When he had finally got control of himself again and his mother had set him on his feet, the first thing that he asked, her was, naturally:
"Mommy, may I pull up my pants now?"
"No, dear,"'answered Mrs. Stevens, who evidently was still provoked with him in earnest, "I want you to go stand in the comer just the way you are right now, and stay there for a while, and as you feel your hot little bottom cooling off I want you to think about what a bad boy you were and decide that you aren't going to act that way any more.
"You mean, I can't even pull up my underpants?"
"That's right, dear. Not right now."
Jackie's extreme humiliation was compounded now by Jimmy's throwing in his two cents' worth; Jimmy, who had been allowed to watch the whole ordeal that Jackie had undergone, and who, in sheer ecstasy, had danced around clutching the crotch of his underpants and pulling at his own little pecker through the fabric in the unconscious act of semi-masturbation typical of many little boys in the so-called years of latency, now piped up:
"Oh, yes, Mommy, make him keep his bottom bare."
At that point it was all Jackie could do to restrain himself from killing his little brother. It would have been well worth the hardest spanking in the world!
The pain had greatly subsided after Jackie had been standing in the corner for about ten minutes. But just then something happened that was even more embarrassing than all Jackie had endured up to now: company arrived, kid company; little kid company. Mommy was busy in the kitchen and probably couldn't hear the! doorbell from there; only Jimmy did, and of course seven-year-old twerps don't know any better than to answer the door in their underpants.
"Oh, no!" Jackie realized. It was Phil, a slender little blond boy who lived, down the street. He was Jimmy's best friend and exactly the same age.
At once Phil remarked on the obvious: "Wow, Jimmy, how come you're runnin' around in your underpants?"
With incredible frankness and nonchalance, Jimmy answered: "Jackie got my pants dirty when he knocked me down in the store. Mommy had to wash 'em and I didn 't have any clean ones to put on, so I'm goin' around like this until the laundry gets done."
"Oh, I see."
"Yeah," Jimmy continued, "but you should have seen the spankin' Mommy gave Jackie! Oh, and you know, he's still standin' in the corner with his pants down! You wanna see him?"
"Oh, wow, yeah!"
Jackie made a mad scramble to pull up his clothes--only he saw his mother's head peering sternly out of the kitchen;, and with that, he lost heart and left his pants and underpants exactly as he had. been told to leave them, even when Jimmy and Phil came in the room. All Jackie did was to cover his nether cheeks as best he could with his hands, so that the smaller boys only caught a brief glimpse of his bared behind. But that glimpse was enough.
"Gaah! Wait till I tell Tommy and Eddie and the other kids about this Jackie gets spanked on the bare bottom, like a five-year-old."
"Jimmy, Phil!" Mrs. Stevens intervened belatedly. " That''s enough! Leave Jackie alone. He's been: punished already. Go away and don't bother him!"
And with that they left, giggling.
Just wait, Jackie thought, those little creeps had laughed at him today, but they wouldn't laugh much tomorrow when he and his friends Johnny and Andy got through with them. They'd catch Jimmy and Phil playing in the woods near the creek, where they played every afternoon, and they'd really fix those little twerps. When Johnny could swipe his mother's enema bag, and Andy could cut some switches off his family's willow tree, and Jackie himself would get some matches from the kitchen.... When they caught those little punks, they 'd tie them up with vines and pull off their shoes and pants and underpants, put that clothing in a pile and burn it; then they'd switch their bare bottoms and legs until they cried and promised never to tell anyone who'd done it to them, and begged and pleaded for mercy; then they'd give them mercy... Jimmy and Phil would each get a two-quart enema with cold creek water, and the tube would be shoved as far up each little kid's butt as it would go, and without any vaseline. Then they'd let them go home bare-bottomed, or maybe even completely naked. Yes, that would be fun to see, Jackie contemplated. Only it would be too hard to explain to parents. No, rather than burn the twarps' clothing, they would just play keepaway with it, like for about an hour.
And they'd have: to use the switches and the enema, definitely, maybe even some candles too...
Yes, no doubt about it, Jackie thought, there would have to be a day of reckoning. After all, little punks have to learn to mind their place and have more respect for their elders and betters, They'd be sorry for the ordeal Jackie had been through today. They'd see--just wait!
(To be continued...)