The weekly meeting of the Ladies Aid Society was being held at the Jacobson home on Saturday afternoon. There were eleven members present, and before the formal agenda was read by the secretary, the ladies engaged in conversation about family matters and local gossip.
Mrs. Adams, who was sitting next to Mrs. Jacobson, asked her how she had handled her son's act of playing hooky from school the day before. "I really let my William have it when he brought the note home from his teacher," she told Mrs. Jacobson. "He won't soon forget the hard spanking I gave him."
"What do you mean playing hooky?" Mrs. Jacobson asked.
"Didn't you know? Your son and mine cut class yesterday afternoon to go to a movies."
"I certainly didn't," said Mrs. Jacobson with some surprise in her voice. Her son, Albert, and William Adams, both ten years old, had been close friends since kindergarten and were always doing things together.
"Didn't he bring home a note from the teacher for you to sign?" asked Mrs. Adams. "It explained that the two boys were seen by one of the teachers when they came out of the show. The teacher marched them back to school w here she wrote notes for their parents to sign before they would be allowed back to school on Monday."
"I haven't heard a thing about it," said Mrs. Jacobson, "but I'm going to find out right now."
She called to Albert and asked him to come downstairs. Albert stopped working on his model airplane and did so, not knowing what his mother wanted.
"Did you skip school and go to a movie with William yesterday afternoon?" Mrs. Jacobson sternly asked her son.
Since Mrs. Adams was sitting there and had obviously told his mother about the incident, Albert knew he had been caught. "Yes," he said in a slightly quivering voice.
"Where is the note from your teacher?" his mother asked.
"It's upstairs," he said. "I was waiting until your meeting was over to show it to you." It was obvious to his mother that this was a lie, but she decided not to challenge him on it.
"I'd like to see it right now," she said. "Go up and get it for me."
Albert was trapped. There was nothing he could do but go to his room and get the note to which he had already forged his mother's signature. He knew he couldn't erase the signature since he had done it in ink. He would have to show it to her and take whatever consequences she decided to meet out.
Albert left the room, went upstairs, and after some minutes returned with the slip of paper.
His mother looked at it, then asked him where the signature came from. "It's obviously not mine," she said with emphasis.
"It's mine," Albert said in an almost inaudible whisper. "I'm terribly sorry."
"Speak up louder," his mother said. "No one can hear you."
That is, of course, exactly why Albert had spoken so softly. He didn't want all the ladies sitting around the room to know what he had done. In a trembling but louder voice, he confessed that he had forged his mother's signature to the note in the hope that she would not find out about his truancy.
"You know that I'm going to have to punish you, don't you?" she said to Albert. He looked at the floor downcast. "And I'm going to do it right now," she continued.
"Not here," he cried out, horrified at the idea of being punished in public.
"Yes, right here," his mother said. "Stand in front of me."
Albert did as he was told, still looking at the floor. He didn't want to look at any of the women in the living room. He knew most of them. Several were mothers of his friends. One was his Cub Scout Den Mother. Others he saw every Sunday in church.
His mother unfastened his belt and pulled it through the loops as he stood there. She then doubled the belt to make it shorter and perhaps more effective when she wielded it. Next, much to Albert's shame, she unzipped his fly and pulled his trousers and underpants down to his ankles. She then spun him around so that he was forced to face the other ladies in the room. They were smiling and bright eyed with expectancy. His shame was intense.
His mother then pulled him over her lap so that his head was but a few inches from the carpet, his highest part being his exposed bottom. She immediately began to apply the belt. It stung like crazy, and Albert at first cried "Ouch" with each stroke, but then he began to sob bitterly as the stinging strokes marked his backside. Where the buttocks join the thighs seemed to be a particularly sensitive area. A thorough spanking at those points makes sitting very uncomfortable indeed for sometime afterwards.
With his buttocks convulsing in pain, his mother continued the punishment until his bottom was bright red in color, and then she stopped. "I guess that you have had enough," she said as she let him up from her lap.
She then told him to appologize to each of the other ladies in turn for "disturbing their tea-time." There was no suggestion that he might be permitted to dress at this point and he did not dare to pull up his clothing without permission so he had to shuffle around the room with my trousers and underwear around his ankles.
When the apologies were done, his mother said, "Now go over in the corner and stand there."
At this point Albert decided he might reach down to grab his pants and pull them up, but his mother stopped him. "I didn't say you could pull your pants up," she said sternly. "You need to keep your naughty bottom on display for awhile."
He hobbled over to the corner, constrained by the trousers and underpants around his ankles, and stood with his back to the assembly. His face was red from embarrassment, but not as red as his buttocks.
At this point the secretary began to read the minutes from the last meeting. Albert had to continue to stand there in this most embarrassing position until the meeting ended some two hours later. All the time he was sure that the ladies in the room had their eyes on him and his red bottom, despite their animated discussion of some of the issues of the meeting. Only after the last guest departed did his mother allow Albert to pull up his trousers and go to his room.