| Subject: The Springtime Switches |
Author:
Mouse
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Date Posted: 06:27:19 03/14/08 Fri
My father came into my bedroom to wake me up and remind me of what day it is. I roll over in bed and groan, and when I lood at his retreating form, I think I hear him chuckle.
Spring has finally arrived, here on our farm, and it's my favorite time of year. The grass shoots up all sweet-smelling, and the wild flowers are blooming all through the pastures. Even the animals seem high-spirited and relieved that the cold,bleak days of winter are gone.
Yeah, Spring is a great time, except for the hated chore of picking the the thin green switches from the fruit trees.
I sigh as I think about how nothing ever changes here. The fences are the same old fences we've always had, the routine is the same as it ever was, and then I think about why I came back here after graduating from college last year.
But even as I think about these things, my butt tenses in nervous anticipation, because I know that of all the things that haven't changed since I've been away and foolishly come back to roost, is that my dad is still the boss around here and if I mess up or talk back or any of the things that he has taught me bot to do, I will feel the switches I am going to pick across my bare bottom.
"I don't know why I put up with this crap," I grouse to myself as I stumble out of bed and grab a pair of old faded Levi's from the floor. "Never should have come back here."
But, even though I am pissy as I wash up and then eat my breakfast, I know that I'd better do the chore Dad has told me to without any backtalk.
The breeze is soft on the back of my neck as I walk past the barn, and I can hear the ducks quacking cheerfully in the small pond near the orchard. The wind is fresh and the day warm but I am filled with an ominous dread as I near the fruit trees. And even from a distance of a hundred yards or so, I can see the new shoots growing out out of the dark branches and my stomach clenches.
The shoots are taunting me as I stare at them and as I reach into my jeans' pocket to retrieve my pocket knife, I can slmaost feeel the, stinging my bare butt as I writhe and moan across the pillows that my dad will make me lie across as I'm being punished.
I say hateful things to the trees, as I cut switch after switch, occasionally stopping to wipe sap from my fingers onto my jeans. The switches are oh so flexible as I cut them, and I can almost hear the swishing sound that will make my whole body tense in anticipation.
I try to distract myself from the reality of cutting switches to be used on my own rear by optimistically telling myself that I just won't do anything to earn myself a switching this year. After all at twenty-two I shoudl be able to keep myself out of trouble. But then I remember last year when I was home for Spring break, and after carefully placing the switches I had picked into a large vase filled with water, i had accidently bumped the vase.
The wet carpet had earned me my first taste of the stingin pain those switches always provided, and before I had returned to college I had earned two more switchings from my Dad.
He was always very matter-of-fact as he whipped by butt, and
he had reminded me cheerfully after a particualrly long and hard spanking with one of those switches, that I would never be too old to feel one of them when I sassed him, or was careless, or clumsy.
My mind comes back to the present and I realize I have been cutting switches on aotomatic pilot. My arms are full of them now. there ar enough of those stinging green shoots to blister my butt every day for a month.
I head out of the orchard and back up to the house, and carry them inside, careful not to slam the screen door on the way in so as not to tempt my Dad to use one of the switched on me before I've even got them into their vase.
I pass by the kitchen and see him sitting at the kitchen table, still sipping on a cup of coffee, and he gives me a smile. "Got your chore done. son?" he asks, and if I didn't know better, I'd swear he sounds amused.
"Yes, sir," I mumble with embarassment as I hurry past.
Once I find the "switch vase" up in the top of the hall closet, I go to the bathroom to fill it with water so the switches will stay supple through the next couple of months. It will be my job to check the water level in the vase and to refill it when it's low, and it's a chore I'm dreading.
I place the arm load of switches into the vase with the cut side beneatht he water level and am just about to get on with the rest of my chores for the day, when my foot clips the vase which I had carefull set on the floor, and it turns over, flooding the floor just like last year.
My dad is beside me in a very short time, most likely having heard the porcailn clinking on the hardwood.
I am astonished at my own act of carelessness, but my dad just wraps his arm around my shoudler and laughs. "I guess you must have missed the lind of sting that only a good switching can impart," he says before sending me to grab some towels to clean up the water I spilled.
Afterwards I'm sent to my room to wait for my first switching of Spring, and I shiver as I place the pillows under my belly, because I know I won't be able to sit down easily for days.
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