Miss Pringle Solves a Problem (F/m)

I am still working on a couple of new stories so have dug into my library for this one. First posted in my anthology* as 'Master Kennedy's Slippering' I have changed the gender of the chastiser. The narrative is as the original and is based on a true event. When I was nine or ten, in the 1950's, a teacher with a penchant for spanking boys put me in this embarrassing situation. I cannot remember why but I remember being mortified at my pending exposure. He did the decent thing and everything else followed as in this tale. I got a private bare bottom slippering. Never complained, to parents or anyone else. You didn't in those days. How times have changed. Alfred Roy

*Scenes From A Disciplined Mind (CPI Antony Rowe, Eastbourne 2008)

 

Barry Kennedy wasn’t a particularly brave boy. In fact some would say he was a bit of a wimp. If that piece of juvenile judgement from his peers was a little harsh, he did once save a cat from a watery grave in the local canal, it nevertheless had a ring of perceptive truth. He did his best to stay out of trouble, followed all the rules, and went home at the time dictated by his elders. But, just occasionally, he incurred the wrath of those elders he did his best to appease. Which is why, in spite of his best endeavours, he suffered the occasional detention at school, the occasional imposition of dreary lines or withdrawal of his meagre pocket money, and, once or twice a couple of swishes of a savage cane or tawse across his outstretched palm. And it was the latter manifestation of adult ire which caused Barry Kennedy the greatest distress. The most recent occasion on which he was the unwilling recipient of a scholastic implement across his equally unwilling hands resulted in two searing strokes to each set of outstretched fingers. The burning pain lasted for the rest of the day, the feeling of injustice considerably longer. He had been arbitrarily rounded up with a few others for some nameless misdeed and, as the cane cracked across his palms, he both winced and cursed. The pain was unbelievable, the fire unrelieved, and the endless throbbing a constant reminder of the cruelty of elders. He hated that pain in his hands and vowed to avoid it in future at all costs.

But such vows, even those made in the heat of severe determination, are prone to be forgotten with the passage of time. And if Barry Kennedy took due care to avoid those dangerous situations which would inevitably lead to scholastic discipline, there were, equally inevitably, seemingly harmless situations which would produce a similar, undesired, result. One such occasion was the notable day when he and two of his young friends were caught letting down tyres in the teacher’s bike shed. They did it in a moment of schoolboy fun, egging each other on in their mischief. When they saw their own teacher’s face, especially as she viewed her own deflated tyres, they dismissed all ideas of special pleading. Miss Pringle was fair but formidable, a no nonsense lady of uncertain years and a strong right arm. When required.

Half an hour later they found themselves lined up in their empty classroom. School was over and most of their fellows had gone home. But they had been detained. Holding a threatening tawse in her hand, this teacher was saying, most eloquently, why they had been detained. They stood there, fearful of the painful worst. The tawse looked pretty impressive. It could do a lot of harm to a young boy. And judged by the look on Miss Pringle’s face, this particular implement was going to deliver a sharp lesson. The three boys held their breath and Barry Kennedy mentally rubbed his hands. And then the recipient of a couple of unwelcome deflated tyres delivered an unexpected option. For their serious misbehaviour they would be severely strapped. Nothing less was deserved. But, and this was the unexpected bit, they would be given a choice. They could either have three strokes of the strap on each hand or four strokes across their bottoms. Clearly this teacher was of the opinion that tawsing the hand was the lesser option. To deliver those strokes to an upturned bottom was the ultimate punishment. Therefore the numbers would be reduced. Barry Kennedy couldn’t believe his luck. To avoid that searing pain in his palms he would have willingly taken any number to his backside, or anywhere else, and he was being offered less.

Even to this day, and all this took place many years ago, he cannot understand why his two eleven year old companions in distress opted for the six on their hands from Miss Pringle. One can only assume that the beating of their bottoms was something beyond their comprehension. It suggested awesome, humiliating, pain. Surely six on the hands, three to each, was preferable to such an indignity. So they took their six and, as they stood in that room with squirming and throbbing palms, they watched in awe and wonderment as Barry Kennedy bent down for his four. And their awe and wonderment knew few bounds as the tawse whacked the tiny shorts of the upturned rear of their schoolboy friend. Their wimpish schoolboy friend. As they walked home it was clear that Barry Kennedy’s stock had taken a considerable leap in the classroom hierarchy. To be strapped on the bottom put you up with the seniors. The news would soon spread. Barry Kennedy would be the talk of the classroom. He had been whacked on the bum by Miss Pringle. In the strange world of the young such events carried their own particular kudos.

Barry Kennedy didn’t see it like that at all. Bending over to get his four whacks of the teacher’s strap had been extremely painful. It had also contained its own peculiar sensations. Touching his toes with his behind sticking out had engendered a strange vulnerability. When that tawse had stroked his bottom prior to the first thwack it created a heightened sensitivity missing when a similar kiss toyed with an outstretched hand. But it delivered a similar excruciating fire and throb to his bottom. A fire which, at the time, seemed more painful. But it was only four, as opposed to six, and the ensuing throb seemed more bearable. To Barry Kennedy there was no contest. Given the choice he would always take it on the bum. And three weeks later he was to find that such a choice was to lead him to the ultimate experience in scholastic displeasure. Circumstances, tantalisingly arranged, would ensure that young Master Kennedy would silently opt for attention to his bottom rather than his hands and on this occasion he would get it on his bare backside.

The day had started quite favourably. Two lessons had been cancelled due to the indisposition of a French teacher, and their own form mistress was engaged elsewhere. So, under the watchful eye of a senior monitor, Barry Kennedy’s class was engaged in the doubtful task of study revision. Trouble was a combination of a slightly racy magazine and their extreme corner position led young Master Kennedy and three of his friends to engage in study of a more dubious kind. Monitors, however watchful, do not have the attuned antennae of more experienced teachers and their furtive quiet ogling of an older brother’s reading matter was misinterpreted as intensive scholastic study. And if their own mistress had not returned unexpectedly early they would have got away with it. But she did return early and her acute antennae twitched, and five minutes later, monitor summarily dismissed, the four friends found themselves standing in the front of the class. In one hand Miss Pringle waved the dubious magazine. In the other hand she waved, more menacingly, a thin and pliable leather slipper. She pulled her chair to the side of her desk, sat down and, in front of a hushed class, ordered the first boy to drop his shorts and bend over her ample knee. The boy nervously did so and, as he lay prone and ready, his grey shirt and jumper were pushed to his waist, revealing a tight small pair of white underpants. Enclosed in those small pants was an equally small pair of young and firm buttocks and eight times a crisp leather slipper whacked into them. Most were laid on the centre of each small cheek but a couple were deliberately delivered to the uncovered thighs. The boy squealed in anguish and, let up, rubbed his bottom and cried his tears with equal heart stopping vigour.

Before this first boy had finished pulling up his shorts and disconsolately made his way back to his desk, the second boy was placed in similar readiness. And as the vicious leather slipper made its indelible marks on a second, white panted, bottom, Barry Kennedy steeled himself for an unwelcome and humiliating confession. He watched in awe and trepidation as the slipper swished down eight times on the young bottoms of his friends. But it wasn’t the bottoms, the whacks, or the cries that occupied his whirling mind. As the second tearful boy was replaced by a nervous whimpering third, dark grey underpants a marked contrast to the pristine white of his walloped friends, Barry Kennedy had only one thought on his mind. Unlike his friends in distress, he wasn’t wearing anything under his shorts. Underpants were a luxury not afforded to the very poor. Miss Pringle placed the slipper against the backside of her third victim and, raising her arm back to its full length, rammed it down with a searing thwack. The boy howled and wriggled and continued to do so through all eight, expertly delivered, strokes. The boy wriggled so much that the teacher had difficulty holding him over her knee and, given the strength of the whacks and the wriggles, at the end those slipping grey underpants offered a tiny glimpse of well tanned naked flesh. Miss Pringle hastily covered the target of her wrath and sent the third tearful boy back to his desk. Barry Kennedy stood and waited. He had no intention of readying himself for the fourth, illuminating, visit to this teacher’s knee.

‘Well, boy. I am waiting. Drop your shorts.’

‘I can’t miss.’

‘I think you can, Barry.’

‘I can’t miss. I haven’t got any underpants.’ Barry Kennedy mumbled this last bit, in the hope that no one would hear.

‘What? Speak up.’

‘I haven’t got anything on underneath, miss. I don’t wear underpants.’

A nervous giggle went around the classroom. Barry Kennedy wished for nothing more at that moment than for the world to open up and swallow him. Miss Pringle repeated this secret knowledge, and the classroom giggled loudly with collusive courage.

‘You don’t wear underpants?’

‘No miss. We can’t afford them.’

The class giggled again and the teacher silenced them.

‘The next boy who giggles will join Master Kennedy in the queue for my slipper.’

A silence descended. Miss Pringle considered carefully. Barry Kennedy looked anxiously at her. What would she do? He didn’t have long to wait. Miss Pringle took her cane from the drawer and swished it through the air. She looked at the boy and was just about to say that, in the circumstances, discretion determined that a few strokes of the cane across his palms would have to suffice. And then she saw the look on Barry Kennedy’s face. This was the teacher who had suffered deflated tyres. The teacher who had offered punishment options. And this was the boy who had offered his bottom in preference to his hands. And this boy eyes were showing, not fear, but the distress of denial. This teacher was being unfair. The others had been whacked on their bottoms, why couldn’t he? Miss Pringle replaced the cane in the drawer.

‘Go and wait outside my study. I will deal with you later.’ She said it quietly, almost gently. Barry Kennedy breathed a sigh of relief and slowly left the classroom. In the distance he heard a boy giggle and, as he closed the door, the voice of his teacher beckoning another nameless soul to join her over her copious knee.

There was at least half an hour to go before the end of the lesson and to say that Barry Kennedy spent that time in a constant state of inner turmoil was putting it mildly. He may have been relieved to escape a caning on his hands but he was acutely aware that some form of punishment was coming his way. And the boy was not stupid. His family may be poor, too poor to splash out on unnecessary nether garments, but they blessed him with a few brains. And his feverish, eleven year old brain was quickly making a few frantic calculations. Miss Pringle could have whacked him, there and then, over his shorts. She chose not to do so. And she chose not to do so because she had something else in mind. And Barry Kennedy had a fair idea what that something else was. And he wasn’t long in finding out that his worst fears were going to be realised. Miss Pringle eventually came to her study, never did a half an hour seem so long, and called the boy in. She calmly explained that to slipper him over his shorts, his thick grey school shorts, would be unfair on the other three who had been chastised. Equally to make him lower his shorts in front of the whole class would have been unnecessarily embarrassing for both of them. Therefore she had decided to punish the boy in private. Dropping his shorts in the privacy of the teacher’s study would mean he received what was justly due and suffered no public humiliation.

‘You know what this means, Barry. It is painfully embarrassing to both of us, but it has to be done. Anything less and you would be let off too lightly. Unless I used my cane and that, whether to your hands or your backside, seems inappropriate. So my slipper will have to be introduced to your bare bottom. It is the only sensible solution, however disagreeable.’ And with that pronouncement Miss Pringle smiled the most unnerving smile that Barry had ever experienced from an adult.

But he listened to all intently and, even though nervous and agitated, he was grateful to this teacher for not caning his hands. So, when instructed, he undid the belt on his shorts and dropped them to his ankles. The action created a strange sensation of vulnerability and promised pain. He nervously shuffled forward, pants at feet, and lent himself forward. No unseemly fighting and struggling as when his father chastised him. Here was quiet compliance and here he, submissively, bent over Miss Pringle’s knee and patiently waited while she lifted his shirt and placed her left hand around his waist. He was conscious of the nakedness of his small buttocks but didn’t seem to mind. And he was conscious of his acceptance of a chastisement that seemed to be right. For a moment there was silence and stillness and then, with her right hand, Miss Pringle picked up the leather slipper and tapped it against the small, smooth, cheeks of Master Kennedy. The leather felt cold, his bottom vulnerable, the pain beckoning. And then, all positions ready, Miss Pringle commenced the serious business.

She whacked the slipper down onto the right wobbling cheek and followed it with another, equally searing blow, to the left cheek. Red marks painted themselves across the naked behind of young Master Kennedy. And the whacks continued until twelve or more were delivered. And after the first four young Master Kennedy began to cry. And he continued crying until the last blow had been struck to his rear. His throbbing, reddened, naked rear. It did not occur to him that he had received a greater chastisement than his friends; merely that he had received it in private. And to his bottom, not his hands. When he rose, and rubbed, he was eternally grateful. Barry Kennedy never forgot Miss Pringle. He forgot her name, he forgot her face. But he never forgot that private bare bottom slippering. The intense heat in his backside remained for a couple of days; the memory of its cause remained forever. And when he finally left school some five years later and entered the world of local commerce he put his first pay packet to very good use. He put a down payment on a much needed bike and, with the balance of his excess cash, he purchased six expensive pairs of smooth, white cotton underpants. That teacher, whatever her name, would approve. He was sure of that.

 

Alfred Roy (amended 2013)

 

To come: Harry and Alexandra (FM/fm)