| Subject: Mr Bute* - Elder of the New Oregon Mission* |
Author:
Douglas
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Date Posted: 11:46:01 05/27/09 Wed
Names marked with a * have been changed from the real ones.
The New Oregon Mission* was founded in the USA in the 1920s and is dedicated to instilling sound moral principles and traditional family discipline, in accordance with the Old Testament.
My parents joined the Mission twelve years ago in Thurso, Scotland and so I was brought up very strictly through my teens. I had to go straight home from the school every evening. I was never allowed to watch the television or play my music until I had finished my homework. And I had to go to my bed early every night with no distractions or computer in my room. On Saturdays I would have to do my share of the household chores before I could go out with my friends.
As advocated by the Mission, my father kept a thick leather strap with which to punish my brother and me, after we all returned home from the Kirk on a Sunday morning, if either of us had committed any misdeeds during the course of the week.
At eighteen, after passing my highers, I left the school and started work in a bank in the town. But I was still subject to the same discipline. Even when I was twenty, I would still have to take my trousers down for father to strap me, if I were not home by ten at night
As you may imagine, I began to feel humiliated and constrained by this treatment. But I had been brought up to respect our father and I could not disobey him.
The solution, seemingly, came a year ago, shortly after my twenty-first birthday when the bank promoted me to the Edinburgh chief office. I found a flat-share in Portobello and revelled in my new-found freedom. I stayed out late at night at parties and clubs with friends from work, and I was certainly never up in time to go to the Kirk on Sundays, and there was no strap to worry about ever again.
When I had been in Edinburgh about six months, a visitor came to the flat introducing himself as Mr Bute, an elder of the Mission. My address had been sent down from Thurso. Mr Bute asked me about how I was getting on in the city and whether I was still going to church. He invited me to join him at the services his family went to in Morningside. Needless to say, I didn't go.
Some weeks later Mr Bute called again. But by then I was starting to be troubled by my new way of life. I was getting well behind with my studies for the Institute of Banking exams, and I had been warned at work about my time-keeping after my numerous nights out. Mr Bute decided there were too many distractions at the flat and said I should spend every Sunday with his family, going to the Kirk in the morning and studying in the afternoon.
Mr Bute is not a man you can easily defy, and so I found myself making my way to Morningside the following Sunday.
Mr and Mrs Bute are a serious and earnest couple in their late forties with a son, Andrew*, still at school. After lunch with the family, Mr. Bute explained to me that he maintained strict disciplne in accordance with the tenets of the Oregon Mission. Andrew had been late getting up for his school one day that week, and his father invited me to witness his punishment.
The three of us went into the study. Andrew moved a heavy, upright wooden chair into the bay window and waited. Mr Bute showed me a tall brass stand which held a number of rattan canes of various sizes. The smallest had been used to punish Andrew when he was a bairn. There was a longer cane which had been used through his junior school years, and the third, longer still and thicker, had been in regular use since Andrew reached his teens. Mr Bute picked it up and walked over to the window, as the boy drew his trousers down and bent over the high chair-back for his father to punish him.
Not many sixteen-year-olds in 2009 are expected to submit to parental corporal punishment, but for Andrew Bute it is just a part of the Sunday routine, as it had been for me and my young brother back in Thurso. Evidently Andrew had been caned quite recently, as I could discern some faded weal marks streaked across his pale white bottom. It occurred to me that my own backside had been free of weals for over six months. Andrew, however, soon had six fresh stingers to punish him for his recent tardyness.
Mr Bute showed me the fourth cane as the boy was pulling his trousers up. It was a little longer and a lot heavier than the one which had just been used to cane Andrew. Bought in readiness for the youth's eighteenth birthday, it had not been used up until then. Mr Bute thought it would inflict more lasting pain than the cane he was then using, and would be necessary to keep Andrew in order through his later teens. I informed the Elder that I had been beaten often until I left home. I admitted that Father's strap had been good for me, helping me to get through my exams. Andrew readily agreed he was lucky to have a father who kept him firmly on the right path.
Mr Bute left Andrew and me to our respective studies. I was glad to be back in a disciplined household where I could concentrate on my work for the Banking exams. Back at the flat however I soon forgot my good intentions. There was another party on the Saturday night. Mr Bute telephoned at twelve on the Sunday morning. They had missed me at church but would expect me for lunch. What else could I do but get dressed quickly and jump in a taxi?
After lunch, Andrew was in trouble again. He had gone to the cinema with a friend on the Saturday afternoon, without asking his parents whether they thought it a suitable film. This was serious and I could sense how nervous the boy was, as he took his trousers down for his punishment. Andrew gripped the chair firmly and gritted his teeth tightly, as his father lashed the cane down determinedly on his bared bottom, punishingly hard - eight times. This was a much more painful beating than I had witnessed the previous weekend, but Andrew acknowledged to his father that he knew he had deserved a good caning.
After punishing his son, Mr Bute turned to me. "You've been a bad example to Andrew, staying out late last night and missing church this morning."
I felt very guilty and apologised.
"In fact you deserve punishment as much as Andrew did."
I could only agree.
"How would your father have punished you, if you were still at home?" asked the Elder of the Mission.
"He'd have given me a beating with the strap, sir," I answered very quietly, recognising where the conversation was leading.
"I don't have a strap, Douglas," continued Mr Bute, "but I do have a good, thick cane I can use." He crossed to the bronze stand, selected the heaviest cane and waited.
Mr Bute had led the tense dialogue to its inevitable outcome. There was only one thing I could do. I went to the bay window, took down my trousers and underpants, and positioned myself over the back of the chair as Andrew had done a little earlier.
After six unruly months, at last I was going to be beaten again. "I've deserved this for a long time, sir," I confessed.
Mr Bute thrashed me as hard as he could - twelve times. The cane hurt in a different, sharper way than the strap I'd been used to. And as Mr Bute intended when purchasing this heavyweight cane - the pain would last long after I got up from the chair. But it was a fair punishment and I took it as quietly as I could.
I have been spending my Sundays at Morningside for nine months now, and my respect for Mr Bute and my healthy fear of his cane helps me get through my banking exam work. Mr Bute canes me if I miss a Sunday morning service, or a Sunday afternoon studying session. And he's promised me forty strokes if I do not pass the exams in June. Thanks to Mr. Bute, I think I will do well.
I still have a lot of freedom during the week back at Portobello, but I have to take my office attendance record to Mr. Bute every week. It's good for me to know I will be caned if I stay out late at night and end up late for work.
Most young men my age would not understand why a twenty-two year old senior banking officer, would obediently take his trousers down and bend over to be caned alongside a sixteen-year-old boy. But Mr. Bute's cane is really helping me, and it's right that I should be made an example of in front of Andrew. The boy says it's a good lesson for him to see me beaten with the big cane, seeing how badly it weals me, and knowing that he will be welted with it too, if he strays off the path when he's older.
And Andrew is a good example to me, always taking his canings quietly and respectfully, apologising for what he did wrong, and thanking his father for the punishment.
So I recommend to any young men in my situation, on the loose in a big city, and failing to keep on top of their studies - try to find a guiding disciplinarian such as Mr.Bute.
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