Random Stories: Mickey and Topher

Cookie Day 2009 was a great success. My only complaint was that I didn’t really get to meet all the kids; at least not to do more than trade names with them. There was a lot of conversation during the initial locust imitation, but after that, most of the kids started wandering off to play. My kids consider it great fun, not only because they get to have friends over for fresh baked cookies, but because they receive a Paternal Dispensation from most chores that day.

While I was cleaning up the mess (by myself, because PJ had homework), Mickey wandered back in with his friend, Topher Koleszar. Topher was the only Cookie Day friend I’d met before because he’d come to Mickey’s birthday party the previous Friday.

Topher’s kind of a weird looking kid. The best way I can think to describe him is that he looks like a young, male, Barbra Streisand. He’s certainly not handsome or good-looking in the traditional sense, but there’s something about him I find very appealing. He does have a big nose and high forehead, but his face is broad enough that they’re not overpowering. It probably helps that his fairly thin, straight, light brown hair hangs down over his forehead and nearly into his eyes and brushes his collar in back. His eyes are hazel, but more green than brown, I think—he tends to squint a lot, which makes it hard to be sure. His teeth look a little over-sized, but he has a smile that should be on a toothpaste commercial; it cheers you up just by being in the room when he does smile, not to mention the little dimples he gets when he lights it up. I think it’s really less his looks than the fact that, without seeming ADHD, he has a very friendly, outgoing personality that is attractive no matter how he might look. He’s not a bad size for a kid his age; but since Mickey would be the oldest kid in his grade even if he didn’t start a year late, Topher looks a bit small next to him, at only about 5’2" and a lean, but not hard, 100 pounds or so.

I’d not gotten to ask about his name on Friday, so I did now. He told me that his real name was Christopher, but his dad was a huge That 70s Show fan and had just started calling him that.

"You get asked about it that much?"

The boy shrugged. "I guess not that much, but a lot."

I had to smile. "My parents called me Jackie when I was younger. Around eleven or twelve, I decided that was a girl’s name, and I wanted to be called Jack. It took years, but I finally got everybody to call me what I wanted."

"Except Granny," Mickey added helpfully.

"Well, yeah, but she mostly doesn’t call me Jackie anymore."

"Unless she wants to get your goat," he replied, using one of my mom’s favorite sayings.

Nothing I could say to that, so I just shrugged.

Topher watched the byplay, then added, "I’m okay with it. At least it’s not Jacob or Ry... or something."

"Hey, I didn’t name him, so you can say Ryan. There are a few of them, aren’t there? You should have seen Jason and Chris about ten years ago."

Both boys smiled, since those still aren’t exactly rare names.

Mickey wandered over and started putting glasses in the dishwasher as I rinsed them, and Topher asked if he could help. What we were doing was only a two- man job, but I let him wipe the table and counter down for me. When he was through with that, he just watched for a minute before speaking again.

"Do you really spank the guys with that paddle in their room?"

"You mean Ryan and Mickey, or in general?" I didn’t have to wait, because it didn’t really matter. "Actually, I do spank with them, but this one and his roommate don’t really need spanking much."

I glanced over to notice that Mickey was blushing a bit, though whether at the announcement he was still spanked or the implied praise, I’m not sure.

I looked back at Topher in time to see his shoulders going down in a small sigh. "That must be nice," he said. At first it seemed apropos of nothing, until I ran back over the conversation.

"You still get it quite a bit?" I inquired in what I hoped was a casual manner.

"More than I want." He paused for a second, as if gathering his thoughts, or maybe his courage, then looked past me. "Did you get it over the summer?"

Mickey glanced up at his friend, possibly checking to see if the other boy was asking me about my recent spanking history. When he’d confirmed that he was the one being queried, he nodded. "Yeah. Once I think, right, Dad?"

"Right after camp? Yeah, I think that’s the only one you’ve had since school let out."

I was watching Topher from the corner of my eyes, even as I finished rinsing the dishes, and saw him sigh again. "I got…four? One for fighting with my little brother, one ‘cause I kept not doing my chores, one for staying out really late, and… oh yeah, one ‘cause me and Danny rented Watchmen after Mom said she didn’t want us to see it."

"I have to admit those are pretty good reasons for a boy to get spanked," I told him. He blushed nicely, but nodded. "Don’t worry about it too much, though, Toph. Twelve seems to be the age where boys need spankings the most."

He looked at me and snorted. "I’ll bet your wrong. Danny’s eleven, and he gets more than me."

"That’s your little brother?" I waited for him to nod. "Well, maybe I should have said eleven to thirteen. Or maybe you’re just better behaved than Danny."

This time Mickey snorted. They’d not known each other long, but maybe I should have suggested that Topher was just slicker than his little brother.

After a moment’s silence, Topher went on. "I’ve never been spanked with a paddle like that before," he volunteered.

"What kind of paddle have you been spanked with?" I just had to ask.

"Just the type they use at school."

"You get spanked at school a bunch?"

"Not a whole bunch."

"Dad used to be a teacher," Mickey interjected before I could try for a definition of ‘whole bunch’, and we wandered off into a discussion of that for a few minutes, while we finished cleaning. By the time we were finished, Topher and Mickey were both up on stools, leaning against the counter, while I was leaning back on the island counter, looking at them.

I was already pretty sure I was going to like Topher. We might never talk about spanking again, but he was pursuing the matter with all the interest and lack of embarrassment of a much younger boy, and it really seemed like he was going to be fun to have around.

After I’d refused to share too many details of school paddlings I’d given, mostly just describing my general method, Topher turned back to Mickey.

"You said he spanks you over his lap?"

Mickey nodded.

"My dad spanks me and Danny like that mostly, but just with his hand, unless we’re in real trouble. Then we gotta lay down on our bed and get the belt."

I subtly checked to see if I was drooling, but Mickey, being a polite son, kept me from having to speak. "Does your dad ever spank your bare b— rear?"

The boy has a deep and wonderful blush and used it before answering. "Yeah, Dad says if he’s gonna go through the effort to spank me, why should I get to wear protection."

Mickey managed not to blush as he admitted the same. "I don’t think Jack ever says that, though. Mostly he just takes our clothes off."

"He does it for you?"

"Yeah."

"Huh," the boy grunted, then looked at me. "Do you think that’s better or worse than having to do it yourself?"

"I dunno," I admitted. "I’m sure it’s more embarrassing that doing it yourself, but I always thought having to do it myself was really hard."

Topher nodded sagely, without adding anything else.

We all stood there for a minute, with me wondering if Topher was a spanko, just naively curious, or only going along with the conversation because I’d given it a couple of nudges. As the quiet stretched, I’d about decided to go back to the computer and see if anyone was in the chat room. I’m glad I waited, though.

"What’s the most embarrassing spanking you ever got?"

Mickey just stared at his new friend for a moment before finally replying. "I’ll tell you after you tell me."

"I asked you first."

Mickey glanced at me, then glanced at Topher, then finally nodded.

"You going to tell him about you and Noah fighting?" I guessed.

"Nope. This happened about two years ago, before we moved in with you….



Mickey’s Story

It was during the summer and we—me and Van, our mom and other dad— were taking a trip with some friends of theirs, Mr. and Mrs. Boardman and their kids. I was really mad about it, too.

We’d driven out to some town around Fort Worth to meet these folks and then we switched to this big van they rented. These folks had three kids. They had one little boy who was about Van’s age, which was 5 back then, and two little girls, who were like 7 and 8. That meant there was no one my age and I wasn’t happy about it. The worst part was, the little kids kept bugging me. Dad kept telling me to ignore them and stay calm and that there’d be some kids for me to play with when we got to New Braunfels, where we were stopping first.

I would have been okay if they’d just left me alone. Mom didn’t like me listening to my MP3 player when there were other people around; she said it was rude, but Dad told me it was okay this time. So I was mostly listening to my music and trying to read. Dad had got me one of those James Herriot novels before we left. I think it was All Things Wise and Wonderful. Anyway, I was just trying to read, but the little kids kept bugging me. I asked them to leave me alone and they would for a few minutes. I complained and Dad or Mr. Boardman would tell them to stop, but they just kept it up.

I really don’t like little girls. It’s like, Van would know I wasn’t in a good mood and didn’t want to be messed with, and he would have left me alone. These two girls thought it was funny or some kind of game or something. I asked Dad if I could move, but he said I didn’t need to be moving around when the van was going, and he wasn’t going to stop just so I could change places. I started getting really mad at Dad for not letting me move, and I didn’t even want to go on the stupid trip, and then one of the girls stuck her tongue out at me and when I pinched her a little, she pinched me back real hard, so I hit her.

Dad pulled the van over for that.

I know it was wrong, but it really wasn’t fair. I’d told him they were bugging me, and I’d asked them to leave me alone, and I wasn’t hurting anybody. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but it was their fault, too.

As soon as the van was on the side of the highway, everybody but Dad got out. It was summer, though, and Dad rolled some of the windows down.

I was ready to be really mad, but Dad didn’t act right. A lot of times, he’d get mad at me and yell for a while, then send me to my room until he calmed down. He didn’t spank me very often because he usually got all the mad out when he yelled. He didn’t yell this time, though.

Dad came and got in the back seat with me, then he did like Jack does and told me that I know how I’m supposed to behave and that I’m older and should know how to treat other people. I tried to tell him what happened, but he said it didn’t matter because he knew I wasn’t protecting myself, so I had no right to touch her. The only reason to hit someone if you’re not protecting yourself is if you’re their parent and you’re correcting them, and that’s called spanking, not hitting.

I wanted to be mad at him, but I knew he was right and I felt really bad. He told me that I could be in a bad mood all I wanted, and that I didn’t have to enjoy the trip, but he wasn’t going to let me ruin it for everybody else. Then he corrected me.

I had to pull my pants and underwear down right there. I was scared to death someone was going to see. Dad said that Mom and the Boardmans were keeping the other kids from looking, but all those cars were driving by, and I just knew someone was going to look in and see me taking my clothes off. Dad told me they were going too fast to see anything and didn’t know me anyway. He finally did it for me because I just couldn’t do it, and I hated that. It wasn’t like when Jack does it, because Dad always made me do it. When Jack does it, that’s just how he does it, but it was really embarrassing when my other dad did it.

Anyway, Dad always spanked me with his hand, but he spanked really slow and he hit really hard. That’s how he did it this time too. I was still mad and didn’t want to cry, but my butt kept getting hotter and hotter and he just kept spanking, and I was thinking it was so unfair, and I was so mad, and so embarrassed, and it just kept hurting worse and worse, and I finally couldn’t help it, and I finally started crying, even though I knew they were right outside the windows and could hear everything.

When he finished spanking me, Dad helped me get dressed and then we got out and walked around for a little bit and he got some Kleenex and water from Mom and helped me get cleaned up.

When we got back in the van, the girls had to sit up front by their mom. Dad had told me I needed to apologize for hitting that one, but their mom made them both apologize to me for being pests.

The worst thing was, by the time I hit her, we were nearly to New Braunfels. When we got there, we met these other friends of Dad’s and they had a boy my age. I got to stay with him when everyone else went to the hotel and we really did have a great time. If I’d just ignored the girls for a little longer, I wouldn’t have even had to get spanked.



"Man! That’s totally unfair," Topher protested.

"Not really. Was it Dad?"

"I think it was wrong for them not to stop and rearrange you kids if you were having trouble, but that didn’t make it right for you to hit her. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say what I would have done."

"Still don’t seem fair. They shoulda at least got a spanking too," he exclaimed, then paused for a while, probably pondering the perfidy of the so-called ‘weaker sex’. After that pause, he went on.

"I guess maybe your Dad’s right about guys our age needing a lot of spankings. If yours happened in the summer, it woulda been right before you turned twelve; right?"

He waited for Mickey to nod.

"Well, me and Danny are barely a year apart. I’ll turn thirteen in October… Next month! Right before Halloween, and he’ll turn twelve about two weeks later.



Topher’s Tale

This happened on the Thanksgiving holidays last year, right after I turned twelve. My Grandparents have this big old house outside of Monroe and us and all Mom’s brothers and sisters were out there, so there were a bunch of kids.

My favorite cousins are Eddie and Dave. Me and Dave are in the same grade, but he’s about six months younger than me. Eddie is about a year younger than him, so him and Danny are in the same grade, too. Whenever we get together, we always have a load of fun. They’re cousins, not brothers.

Anyway, last year, Dad had some work thing he had to do, so he had to leave right after the Cowboy’s game, but Mom stuck around for the weekend. Eddie’s mom is divorced. Her and Mom are almost the same age, and they went out Friday to mess around with Aunt Helen—that’s Dave’s mom. That left Dave’s Dad, Big Dave, in charge of us.

Anyway, like I said, they live outside of town and it’s really pretty neat. The only bad thing is, the creek where we used to play all the time is on private property and some new people bought it a couple of years ago, so we’re not supposed to go down there anymore. There’s other stuff to do, but the creek is just awesome, even if you can’t go sk… swimming. And it was pretty chilly to go swimming, so we just went down there to play. Anyway, they used to have this GREAT tire swing that went all the way over the creek. We just went down there to see if it was still there.

Well, it was and we were playing around and having a great time, and we were playing like we were in Terabitha and fighting monsters and stuff, but then Dave was messing around and standing on top of the swing and he slipped off it into the water. We helped him get up, but I guess we all got muddy and wet.

We were trying to clean the mud off and figured maybe we could stay out long enough to dry off, but it was getting a little cold and we finally had to go in.

Our moms had got back while we were gone. First thing when Big Dave saw us, he starting chewing us out about not checking in and going places we weren’t supposed to. I guess we could have tried to tell him we didn’t go to the creek, but I don’t know where else we could have got all muddy and wet, so we just admitted it.

Well, Big Dave stuck his head in the house and told our moms to get us some towels and clean clothes. When they brought the stuff out, he talked to my mom and Aunt Grace—that’s Eddie’s mom—and then he took us all into the garage.

Grandpa has a heater out there and Big Dave turned it on, then told us to all get undressed. We all skinned down to our shorts and Dave threw us towels so we could get dried off. When we were all done, Little Dave started crying a little, because Big Dave was taking off his belt. Then Dave told us all to take off our shorts, too.

That’s why this is my most embarrassing spanking ever. We’d all got spanked together before. It was kind of weird, but it wasn’t a lot worse than when me and Danny get spanked together. But I’d just turned twelve and.…"

(I looked over at the boy as his voice trailed off, and saw that he was blushing hard enough that he was nearly glowing. After a moment or two of silence had dragged by, I finally helped. "You’d hit puberty?" I suggested. He glanced at me, embarrassed that I’d said it, but grateful to have it out of the way.)

The other three guys were still little kids, but I wasn’t just a lot bigger than them, I even had a little bit of hair down there. All of them were looking at me, except Little Dave, and even he was after a minute. I was wishing I could just die.

Big Dave wrapped that belt around his hand a few times, so just the end of it was hanging loose, then he grabbed Eddie and sat down on a crate Grandpa had out there, put Eddie over his lap and wore him out. I was scared to death. I don’t think Big Dave was hitting any harder than Dad, but Eddie was yelling so much it just seemed worse.

When he got through with Eddie, he let him up and grabbed Danny. Eddie was jumping all around and rubbing his rear, and it would have been really funny if I didn’t know I was about to get it myself.

So Dave does Danny the same way, and Danny does the same jumping all around, rubbing and crying, while Big Dave grabs Little Dave and does the same thing to him. I was ready just to get it over with when Little Dave got up, but Big Dave stood up at the same time.

While Little Dave was dancing around, and he was spanking so fast that Eddie and Danny were still crying some, Big Dave chewed me out some about how I’m oldest, and I’m supposed to be responsible and set a good example. I guess I wasn’t really paying too much attention though, because I was too busy watching that belt. He unwrapped it from around his fist and doubled it over. When he was finished talking to me, he gave it one snap that sounded loud as thunder, then he reached out and grabbed my arm.

I guess it was fair for him to whip me different, because I am the oldest, and Little Dave hadn’t really started growing yet, so I was a lot bigger than him and Danny, but it was still really scary, and I guess I was crying before he hit me the first time.

Really it wasn’t as bad as when dad whips me. When I’m laying on the bed, I can’t get away from the belt. The way Uncle Dave was holding me, I could jump so it didn’t hit so hard, but it was still really loud and scary and it still hurt plenty bad, and I was crying as loud as the little kids before he finished with me.

I thought it was sort of funny when they were all jumping around and stuff, but I guess I did it as much as they had. After a while I got through crying, and they other guys were, too. I was kind of surprised, because Big Dave was gone, and I hadn’t even noticed him leave. Little Dave said his dad told us we could get dressed and go in as soon as we were ready. None of us were ready to put anything on our butts right then, except maybe ice. I was ready to go in before the other guys, though. I’d shown Danny when I first got some hairs, but now all the guys were talking about my thing and how funny I’d looked with it flopping around while Dave whipped me. I tried to tell them they did the same, but then they started joking because my thing was so long. I didn’t think it was that funny, but I guess it sort of was. I just wish I could have seen that with someone else.



"Anyway, what about you, Mr. Wells?"

"What about me, Topher?"

He gave me one of those ‘can you believe adults’ looks before answering. "What was your most embarrassing spanking?"

"I had several embarrassing spankings during my boyhood, and I’m not sure any of them are things I want my sons finding out about. Besides," I added to cut of both boys’ protests, "I have stuff I need to do on the computer before my soccer team shows up for practice and you two have made me late. I ought to spank both of you.…"

I let the threat lie, and Mickey chose the better part of valor, leading Topher out of the kitchen.

As they were walking away, I heard Topher say, "He was just kidding, right. He wouldn’t really spank one of your friends."

I didn’t hear Mickey’s answer, but I don’t guess I needed to. Topher’s "NO WAY!" told me exactly what he’d heard.



Return to Story List

Return to Table of Contents