by Louis Woodley
School teacher Carol Wallace pulled into her driveway on the Thursday after Thanksgiving; only eleven more days of school and then it would be Christmas break. She was in a good mood as she went to the mailbox; a few minutes later, furious would be a more accurate description.
In the mail was an envelope addressed to her daughter Ginny from her college registrar's office. She opened it, assuming it was about Ginny's next semester class schedule. It was about class registration, but it certainly wasn't the message Carol expected to see. It said that they would not be able to process Ginny's registration unless she had a zero balance with the college. And right now she owed $165 in unpaid parking tickets; so nothing would happen with her registration until they'd been paid in full. $165! Surely there had to be some kind of mistake? It was late in the day but Carol intended to find someone at the college who could help her get to the bottom of this.
Meanwhile, a little over two hours away, Ginny was blissfully unaware of her impending demise. Her college campus was very spread out and the nearest town was a couple of miles away. Freshmen weren't allowed to have cars on campus, so you had to walk, wait on the bus, or cultivate a friendship with an upperclassman if you wanted to get off campus. So last year Ginny had felt trapped on campus, but now that she was a sophomore and had her car with her, the freedom to just run to Wal-Mart was exhilarating.
But with driving also comes responsibility. Unfortunately, she'd been lackadaisical about the annoying tickets. She hadn't thought they were fair since there weren't enough student parking spaces. She'd meant to fight them but had stuck them in her glove box and forgotten about them. She didn't know it yet, but this carelessness was about to make her next trip home a very unpleasant one.
Back at the Wallace household, Carol had bounced between the Registrar, Campus Security, and the Bursar's office. Now she had a clearer picture of what had happened. Several of Ginny's tickets had been minor citations for parking in a faculty lot on the other side of campus from her dorm. Given when they were issued, Carol assumed Ginny had driven to class and hadn't been able to find a spot in the student lot. However, there was that late night ticket for illegal parking on fraternity row. But what absolutely could not be explained was why Ginny hadn't taken care of them. Either she had suffered a traumatic brain injury affecting her memory or she'd been lax in handling her responsibilities. Carol was pretty sure which the most likely explanation was.
As the tickets remained unpaid penalties had been added, increasing the fines. They would continue to escalate until paid, so Carol opened her purse and paid the $165 over the phone to staunch the financial bleeding. Once she confirmed that Ginny now had a zero balance, Carol hung up and sent a brief text to her daughter: COME HOME THIS WEEKEND!
Ginny was surprised to receive her mother's message. She'd just been home for Thanksgiving and was looking forward to this weekend as the last chance to party before final exams. Everyone seemed to be planning a final blowout, so she was disappointed to miss the fun. But she had taught her mom enough about texting that she knew that typing in capital letters was the equivalent of yelling at someone. Something important must have come up that she didn't want to discuss over the phone. So she texted back: OK. See you tomorrow night.
Ginny was nervous on the drive home Friday afternoon. It had just been the two of them ever since her dad had a heart attack when she was nine. They were careful with money but not poor; Ginny's scholarships had been a big help paying for college. She'd sometimes borrowed her mom's car during high school and hadn't needed one as a college freshman. This summer she'd finally gotten her own vehicle, so Mom no longer had to come and pick her up from school.
But now she couldn't help thinking something seriously wrong had just happened; otherwise why hadn't Mom mentioned it last week? Maybe something had happened to her job? Or was she sick? It had been horrible losing her father and she couldn't imagine being without her mom. She tortured herself on the drive home imaging nightmarish scenarios. The scenario she didn't imagine was the nightmarish treatment her bottom was going to endure. Wasting money was one of Carol's pet peeves and Ginny was as yet unaware that she'd royally irritated her mother.
When Ginny misbehaved, Carol only had one form of punishment and it wasn't a time out. Even now, Mom still occasionally pulled down her pants and gave her a few swats on the butt for minor offenses. They were basically attention-getters, not serious punishment.
Ginny had actually gotten one of those spankings last weekend after she repeatedly ignored Carol's request to get out of bed and hit the shower so they could go shopping. Her snoozing was interrupted by her covers being pulled off; before she was fully awake her nightgown was being flipped up. Ever since she was young Ginny hadn't worn panties at night and Carol hadn't cared. In a way it was convenient; if Ginny needed some swats then she didn't have anything to remove. Ginny was suddenly wide awake, but it was too late to plead for mercy. Once her bottom was bared a spanking was a foregone conclusion.
"I called you three times. You know how much we've got to get done today; we're supposed to be leaving in ten minutes and you're still in bed. Maybe I can help motivate you to get moving..."
Ginny braced herself for what she knew was coming and Carol didn't disappoint her. She gave her daughter's butt a total of eight hard spanks, alternating between cheeks. It wasn't enough to draw tears, but it did generate a couple of "ows" and left pink handprints as souvenirs.
"Now do you think you can get your butt in gear or do you need a little more motivation?" Ginny assured her mom she was now fully awake, crawling out of bed and pulling off her nightgown as she headed to her bathroom. That was all it took to get the desired result.
But Mom had an arsenal of weapons she had used on her daughter's hindquarters when she'd done something significantly wrong. A kitchen spoon, a ruler, a bath brush, several hairbrushes, switches, the leather strap from a purse, and even once a ping pong paddle had all been used to turn Ginny's bottom bright red. There was no rhyme or reason as to why a particular implement was chosen; but regardless of why it was selected, Carol put it to good use. For these punishments she meant serious business; she methodically wielded her chosen implement until her daughter was sobbing and her butt was throbbing. Ginny was always contrite and apologetic once the tears had stopped flowing.
These spankings had become few and far between as Ginny got older and generally exercised good judgment. The last had occurred during the summer. A badly missed curfew, complete with some ill-chosen remarks about now being a college student entitled to make her own decisions, made Carol decide that her daughter was getting too big for her britches.
So her britches disappeared after she was escorted to the kitchen and her mother reestablished who made the rules in the family. She pulled Ginny's wrist straight up so that she was forced to stand on her toes. Then she played a lively game of 'let's remind Ginny who's boss', peppering her butt and thighs with her big wooden spoon. Ginny tried to be evasive, but Carol had a death grip on her arm. All she could do was go up on her toes and try to squirm sideways to avoid direct hits. She was quickly doing a war dance, howling her apologies and promising to abide by her curfew from now on. However, Carol continued long enough to make sure the lesson got remembered. As soon as Carol let Ginny go she immediately wrapped her arms around her mom and sobbed on her shoulder. Carol hugged her back and promised that all was now forgiven.
Since then, Ginny had done nothing to earn a similar punishment. However, exercising good judgment and accumulating $165 in parking fines didn't seem very compatible. So Ginny was driving home worrying about her mother, not realizing she was the one about to have the problem.
Ginny got home in the late afternoon, not long after Carol did. She went into the house not knowing what to expect. Her mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She didn't look sick; in fact she looked irritated. Ginny decided it was better to play it carefully until she had more information to go on. So she tried the affectionate daughter approach, giving her mom a hug before cautiously asking, "Hey, I got your message. What's up?"
"Well I know you are just home but something came up that we need to have a little chat about."
The danger alarms started going off in Ginny's head. In mom-speak "have a little chat" was a euphemism indicating that Ginny had made some type of mistake that could leave her vulnerable to an intense spanking. Carol especially used it when she was aware that Ginny had made an error of judgment and was giving her a chance to confess and partially mitigate the punishment. At this point Ginny was still clueless and unable to offer a defense. But her mom would soon enlighten her.
"What do you mean Mom?"
Carol knew Ginny was a poor liar. Several failed dubious explanations when she was younger had led to the increased length and severity of the resulting spankings. She could tell when her daughter was pretending to not understand what she was being accused of. In this case she was convinced Ginny wasn't lying; unfortunately, that wasn't going to help her cause since it demonstrated her total lack of attention to the tickets she'd failed to pay. It was time to put her on the defensive!
"Well, let's start with this dear." She pushed the Registrar's letter across the table for Ginny to read. "Maybe you can explain to me why someone who claimed she was mature enough to take her car to school would have five unpaid parking tickets? Those tickets would have cost $45, if they'd been paid on time. But no, she's so responsible she thinks she can ignore them and they'll magically disappear. She does absolutely nothing and $45 becomes $165 because of the late charges. Then this lovely letter came yesterday saying that you're not registered for spring semester until all your fines are paid. So you may not get into the classes you wanted.
"Then let's talk about how I got to spend yesterday afternoon playing phone tag all over your campus trying to clean up the mess you created. And the fact I had to come up with $165 to bail your butt out of trouble. How can you be so irresponsible? You're almost 20 years old, a sophomore in college, and you pull a stunt like this. You told me you could take care of bringing your car to school, but here we are four months later and you couldn't have registered for classes because you chose to ignore your tickets. If I hadn't happened to open that letter it would have sat here until you got home. Then you would have found out after the campus was closed for break that you weren't registered and no one would be there to help straighten out this mess. THAT is what I want to discuss with you young lady!
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