A Chat with Noah (and the Bauers)

It’s always fun meeting new kids. Parents, especially parents of young kids, are more aware these days than in my childhood. Sometimes I wonder if my mom just had no clue, but I honestly can’t remember any of my friends’ parents checking up on my parents either.

I’ve learned over the years to issue invitations in such a way that the parents can feel included if they want. Occasionally someone will just send their child(ren) over. Other times, the parents will never want to leave their side. Meeting the Bauers was somewhere between those two.

While I feel that many parents are overprotective these days, I do like the idea of meeting your children’s friends’ parents. After all, if they’re going to be spending a lot of time over there, shouldn’t you know a bit of something about the people who run the house?

Rachel Bauer had called to let me know they were running late, so you can imagine that my own two were pretty keyed up by the time the doorbell rang.

"Decorum!" I called over my shoulder, as I placed the copy of PREVIEWS I was studying on the coffee table.

Two pairs of skittering feet slid around the corner and slowed just a bit as they rushed towards the front door.

By the time I could get to the entryway, the door was open and two pairs of boys, almost matching in height, were chittering away at each other.

"Hi," I said, reaching through the mini-mob. "I’m Jack Wells."

"Rachel Bauer," the lady answered. "Ray."

"I’m Jack. The blond blur here is Leif, and the slightly shorter one is Kenny."

She laughed and introduced me to her two. Jake is the third grader, and Zack is in first.

I escorted them in and suggested the kids show their friends around. After giving them a head start, I gave Ray the tour.

"How long are you going to be able to stay?" I asked.

The original intention had been about an hour, but I wasn’t sure if their delay had affected things.

"Oh, we’re in no rush now," she answered. "My husband and I both had things we had to get done today. The boys were supposed to spend the afternoon with their aunt, but two of her kids have bugs now, so we didn’t want them going over there. We might have let them go over and play in the yard, but…"

She trailed off as she made a gesture outside. It wasn’t exactly cold out, but it would have been pretty cool for the little guys, and it was very gray and damp, having drizzled off and on most of the day.

"So I took care of my errands, while Tom stayed home with the boys; then I came back to get them, and… Tom’s still coming, by the way, but he’s going to be a bit late. I hope that’s all right."

"Of course, it is," I assured her.

We didn’t bother with the upstairs area, but I showed her the game room and theater. We stayed down there long enough to play some air hockey. Then I showed her the library (which she loved) and the playroom and the little guys’ bedroom (where her sons had already settled).

About that time, Tom showed up. Instead of repeating the tour, we ended up settling at the breakfast nook, I got drinks, and we started playing rummy.

Jake and Zack look similar enough that they could be twins. They both have medium-dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. They have similar builds, and the shape of their faces and ears are almost the same. They wear their hair a bit differently. Both of them have fairly short, slightly bushy haircuts, but Zack wears his with little bangs, while Jake pushes his to the side a bit so it’s almost parted.

The main differences are that Zack has dimples a bit more pronounced than his brother does and their noses. Jake’s nose bends inwards from the bridge, then flares out almost in a bar at the bottom. Zack’s is more a pair of ‘V’s, one spreading from his forehead towards his mouth, and the other rising up to meet it and form a slightly rounded tip.

Both boys are cute as teddy bears.

I mentioned that to their parents as Tom was dealing another hand.

"Well, they’re only twenty months apart," Ray supplied.

"Which explains why they’re so close to the same height," I answered.

While there’s not much difference between Kenny and Leif, I would have thought there was only about two inches between Zack and Jake. Of course, boys don’t tend to grow quickly at that age. I’m not a great judge of height at that age, but I thought Jake must have only been about 4’3" or so, while his little brother was probably about 4’1".

"Of course," Tom added, "Jake looks a little younger now because of that tooth."

I nodded. Jake was missing one of his canine teeth, which gave him a slightly lopsided, goofy look. It made him look sweet and charming, and very much like a little boy.

"Zack does seem more serious than his brother," I added.

The parents looked at each other.

"Not normally," Ray assured me. "I’m sure if you checked now, you wouldn’t see it?"

"Really?"

I was about to ask if he was very shy or something, when their father answered the question.

"I spanked him this afternoon, and he has to sulk for at least an hour after a spanking."

"Then he normally settles down to pout for a while after that," Rachel added.

"Actually," Tom continued, "the fact that he wasn’t still pouting when you got here shows how much he was looking forward to this."

"Well, I’m glad he was looking forward to it."

"You know," I said after a second, "that actually sounds like Noah."

As big as my house is, the surest way to get someone’s attention is to mention his name.

"What sounds like me?" Noah asked as he came around the corner, headed towards the fridge.

"You know when you complain about me embarrassing you in front of people?"

He turned from the fridge and gave me a look.

"Yeah…"

"This is one of those. You really don’t want to know."

Tom was smiling at the byplay. Noah wasn’t.

"Okay," he responded, "now I’ve got to know. What’re you talking about?"

"They were mentioning that one of their sons sulks after a spanking. I was going to tell them about the time you punched me after I’d spanked you."

"I did not punch you," Noah complained.

"You hit me in the eye," I responded.

"It was an accident."

Tom started laughing.

Noah glared at him.

"Sorry," Tom said, "but first you said you didn’t do it, then you said it was an accident."

Noah stood there with his mouth hanging open, blushing a dark red, so I took pity on him.

"He’s actually telling the truth," I started to explain. "It was one of the first spankings I’d given him after he moved in here…"

"The first spanking after I moved in," Noah interrupted.

He turned to look more at Tom and Ray.

"Dad had spanked me once before I was really living here, but the time he’s talking about now was after I’d officially moved in."

"What’d you do?" Tom asked.

Noah reddened again.

"I was just being a jerk. Dad has all these guys living here, and he has a bunch of rules. I wasn’t used to that, and I really didn’t like it much. And I’ve seen him with some new kids since then, and how he gives them time to get used to stuff, but he was being stricter with them than he was with me. I guess I was just mad at him, and I told him I wasn’t gonna do all those stupid chores and stuff, and I guess I kinda told him he didn’t love me anyway."

"Wait," Tom said when Noah grounded to a halt. "You mean to tell me you were mad at him for making you do chores and follow rules, and you were mad at him because he didn’t spank you when you didn’t do them?"

The look Noah gave him was a combination of unfriendly, embarrassed, and confused.

"It sounds really stupid when you say it like that."

"No," Rachel interrupted. "It actually makes sense. You weren’t happy or comfortable with all the rules, but you also weren’t happy because your dad was treating you different from everybody."

"Yeah," Noah answered, sounding happy.

He was probably just glad that someone seemed to understand how he’d felt.

"The funny thing was," Noah continued, "he didn’t really get mad when I told him I wasn’t doing the chores, but when I said he didn’t love me, he chewed me up one side, down the other, then grabbed me by the neck, took me to his office, and wore me out."

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed.

"Actually, I just told him that if he thought he wanted a whipping that bad, I could arrange it for him. I really shouldn’t have, because I was kind of mad at him, but Noah’s always seemed to know just how to push my buttons."

The boy in question smiled.

"Yeah, but I learned quick that pushing them can get awful sore."

His smile turned rueful.

"My mom was never a big spanker, but I’d had a few. Dad’s spankings… Man, they hurt like h…"

He stopped.

"You can say hell, Noah; just don’t make a habit of it in front of the little guys."

He nodded.

"Dad’s spankings hurt like hell. I knew that, and I was trying to figure out what was wrong with me. He was getting ready to whup me, and I was trying to convince him he didn’t’ actually have to do it."

He sighed.

"That never does work, does it?" Tom asked.

Noah smiled at him and shook his head.

"And that’s when the trouble happened," I said, stepping into the silence.

"After I spank one of my kids, I hold them and hug them for a bit. I want them to know it’s over and behind us, and that I still love them. Most of the kids want that and appreciate it. Noah? Not so much. When I tried to help him sit up, then pull him to me, he was trying to push away from me."

I paused for a second to gather my thoughts.

"What I should have done was just let him go, but you know what they say about hindsight. I didn’t want to let him go and just dump him on the floor, so I was trying to get a hold of him and help him stand. He obviously didn’t know what I was trying to do, so he started fighting to get away from me."

I think I was shoving at him, kind of like this…" Noah said, making a shoving, thrashing motion with his arms.

"And that’s when he hit you?" Rachel asked.

I nodded.

It was the heel of his hand," I explained. "Caught me right here," I added, pointing at the cheek, right under my left eye.

"I didn’t really know that I’d hit him at that point. He finally let me go, and I landed on the floor, which kind of made me mad at him. Then he told me to go stand in the corner. That was fine with me. I just wanted to get away from him."

It was Noah’s turn to pause. I was about to carry on when he spoke up again.

"A while later, he told me I could turn around. He was holding a washcloth up to his face, but he didn’t say anything about it. He chewed me out, told me I was going to do the chores I was assigned, and promised he’d wear me out if I didn’t. Then he said he DID love me and always would, and asked if he could hug me."

"Did you let him?" Ray asked, obviously entranced by the story.

Noah blushed.

"Honey, you do not ask teenage boys something like that," Tom warned her.

"No, it’s okay," Noah assured them. "Yeah, I let him hug me. Dad’s a big hugger. You get used to it."

He smiled at me, then he picked up the glass he’d poured while we’d been talking. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Instead of saying anything else, he came over, hugged me, then left.

I gathered up the cards and started shuffling in the silence.

"He seems like a really good kid," Ray finally said.

"He is. He’s had a hard life in some ways, but he’s a really good kid."

"How long has he lived here?"

"Three years last month, actually."

"You know…" Tom started, then trailed off.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, didn’t you say Barry was your only biological child?"

"Yeah," I agreed, smiling, because I already knew where this was going.

"It’s just that you and Noah look a lot alike."

I nodded, and launched into the explanation.



The talk moved on as we played, then circled back to spanking in a more general way.

"I believe in free range parenting in theory," Ray was explaining, "but it’s hard to carry out sometimes."

"Well, I don’t really think you can do totally free range anymore. The important thing is protecting your kids without being over-protective. Give them freedom, but only what they can handle."

Ray smiled. "That’s exactly it. The hard part is deciding what they can handle."

"No, the hard part is when they get hurt, and you think you could have prevented it. I know that sometimes kids get hurt, and kids need to get hurt sometimes to learn things, but that doesn’t make it easier on parents."

Tom laughed, even as he nodded.

"I’m so glad we met you," he said after a minute. "I always worry about the kids’ friends… Well, about their parents, really. I mean, I was spanked pretty often when I was a kid, and me and my brothers grew up just fine, but these days, I kind of feel like a freak for it."

"If you only read the paper, I can see why you’d feel that way, but most of the kids I know still get spanked or at least threatened with it. I know a lot of people don’t agree, but I think it works just fine if you have a good relationship with the kids and they know what will get them one."

They both nodded.

"I try to give the kids plenty of chances," Tom added. "Like today. Zack was upset about not getting to go to his cousins and was kind of throwing a fit about it. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t want to settle down. I finally sent him to his room. Two minutes later, he was complaining about that. I told him he could come back into the living room if he’d quit complaining. That lasted about a minute, and I finally told him he could either quit complaining, go back to his room, or get a spanking."

"Sometimes a boy just has to see how far he can push."

They both nodded.



That was our last hand. I invited them to stay for dinner (such as it is on a typical Saturday night), but Ray explained she’d left pork chops out to thaw.

We’d been checking on the kids from time to time, and they’d come running in to update us from time to time. Now we gathered up the cards, then went to gather up the kids, knowing we were going to get some complaints on both sides.

When we walked into the little guys’ bedroom, Zack and Jake came running up to their parents, holding a pair of Spanky Bears.

"Dad," Zack explained solemnly, "Mr. Wells doesn’t make his kids pull their undies down when he spanks them!"

"He doesn’t?" Tom responded, looking at me and blushing a bit.

I looked back, but before I could explain, Zack went on.

"He does it for them. And this is a Spanky Bear."

Tom was a bit nonplused, but Ray seemed to like the idea of a Spanky Bear.

While Zack and Jake don’t know it yet (six and eight year olds not being well known for their ability to keep secrets), they’ve both been invited to Kenny’s Build-a-Bear birthday party in a few weeks, so I’m wondering now what kind of bear they’ll be building.

At that age, it doesn’t seem to take long to make friends. They already knew they liked each other from school, but now they knew they were all crazy about a lot of the same things, from Pokemon, Batman, and Spider-man, to Lego, K’nex, and Hot Wheels.

The Bauers live across the main street from us, and neither set of little guys are allowed to cross it by themselves, but it’s really not very far, and we’ve promised them all a lot more visits. That didn’t exactly make them happy to be leaving, but it helped a bit.

Oh, and Rachel even promised to introduce me to some other people she knows. Their younger son is a first grader, though in a different class from Zack and Kenny, but her older son is in class with Ethan’s friend, Brian.

And now it looks like the young Bauers are going to join cubbies. Tom works 7am to 3pm, so I’m hoping to finally get another adult to help us with things.

Now if I could just stop thinking about one thing. I’m sure Zack and Kenny would fit over my lap together, but I’m still trying to decide if Leif and Zack would or not.

Wonder if I’ll ever get to find out?





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