Author:
A Very Bad Boy
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Date Posted: 06:21:41 04/20/24 Sat
I have this scene etched in my mind — a girl, really a young woman, walking down a hallway.
From waist to toe she is bare, in-and-of-itself, not a remarkable situation. She is wearing only the top to her pajamas, but it seems there could be an explanation for this that would raise no eyebrows. However, something is clearly not right. The look on her face. That is dread in her eyes …and in the set of her mournful mouth. And through the entire body language is a sense of her heading towards some spectre of doom, down from her sloping pj-covered shoulders, down to where she is bare, down to feet that march to the slow beat of a funeral's drum.
In those eyes is more than dread. They want to look around to see if anyone might be watching but, instead, fixed straight ahead, they reflect the stiffness in her being. The idea that her walk is on display for anyone in the house to see is just not something she wants to acknowledge to herself at this moment. Not at 18 years of age. Is it not mortifying enough that everyone in the house is fully aware of what is happening and why it is happening? That there is a thoroughly justifiable reason for her disgrace? The painful truth is that her misbehavior today was significant and inexcusable. Let us not forget, she is old enough to be starting college!
Her destination on this walk to the gallows is her parent's master bathroom. Despite her advanced age, she has no illusions. She is trapped in a stunningly old-fashioned family ritual from which there is no escape. It starts with this half-naked walk of shame, her stomach churning, her nates tingling bare in anxious anticipation. How long will she have to wait trembling in the bathroom before her mother comes to correct her grown-up child with the bath brush. Tradition dictates in this house, that on rare occasions when needed, the brush is used to set fires. Until it happens, and well after, a young lady old enough for college will be totally preoccupied with Mom's spanking brush and with her own tender bottom. Everyone in the house is going to hear, loud and clear.
Yes, she was a bad girl, but how can we not feel pity for her today?
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