The Longest THE WAIT

REAL Spanking Short Stories from The Life and Times of...

Apr 09, 2023

Waiting for a little ‘talk’ (also known as a thrashing).

Falling in love with someone who lives around a three- or four-hour drive away is a minor inconvenience, falling in love with a dominant who lives this far away is an altogether trickier affair. In particular, when it comes to the matter of discipline. Once I was awarded a caning and had to wait three weeks for it due to our schedules not lining up, largely because of the excessive driving time required to get one, or the other of us, to the other end of the country. I lost three quarters of a stone, despite being in fine shape beforehand - I think it is fair to say that THE WAIT has a profound effect upon me and I certainly prefer to keep waiting of all kinds to a minimum.

A 3-week wait for a disciplinary caning wasn’t good for either of us but in the context of our fledgling relationship there really wasn’t another way to do it. It was a difficult period for me and I remember that time very well indeed. Aside from the stark weight-loss, I coped with it reasonably well and I have to say it did its job. I certainly never wound up in the exact same position again, taking greater care when I knew that we would be separated for any serious length of time. That caning was epic, I could probably write a whole book about that one experience. I lived and it worked, however I wouldn’t want a wait like that ever again.

Since moving in with Mr. James around a decade ago, I have only had to wait longer than a handful of days for punishment on one or two occasions. Once due to needing to recover from running a marathon and I think the other occasion was because I was away competing and got into trouble whilst abroad. Other than that, THE WAIT generally lasts about ten minutes or less and it is rare that my HoH will make me wait more than that for real discipline, save for times when he will have me ‘sleep on a sentence’, for effect. This is only ever kept to one night and, generally speaking, he prefers to serve justice with immediate effect.

Hence, I bring you this rare event in my spanking calendar from only 3-weeks ago. It was a French Friday incident, which will surprise absolutely no one by now. Suffice to say that I’d been working extremely long hours, it is not an exaggeration to say that I was averaging well over 90 hours of work per week in the last quarter of 2021. It has been a broadly successful time and I have genuinely produced some of the best work of my career. Sadly, this achievement has come at a cost and that cost was my otherwise pretty-well perfect, until now, lessons at school.

Although I was punished for poor homework back in January and my teacher needed a long period of rest and recovery from around March to July, (not related to teaching me I hasten to add), I had managed to keep my nose remarkably clean this year. In fact, a couple of sharp rebukes and stern warnings aside, I had racked up 30 consecutive lessons each of 90-minutes duration, without incurring a single instance of discipline. Not even so much as a set of lines to write.

Given my teacher is a professional disciplinarian and I mean that in the purest sense of the term, and that I have a rather colourful character, it was nothing short of extraordinary that I should find myself going into my 31^st lesson with a completely clean slate. (I actually had to look up these statistics for a second time as I didn’t believe them myself!)

It was perhaps not surprising then, that things were about to go South and I do mean very, very South. I’d finished work on the Thursday night at around 21:00 and had about 3 hours to make the weekly midnight deadline for my French homework submission. I got stuck into it hoping that I would have enough time to get it done and off to bed before the clock struck twelve. There were basically two components to the work as is often the case in language learning. One part was written, in this case vocabulary sheets, and the other part was, of course, to learn them. I knew that I was too goosed to learn new words, let alone the atrocious French spellings but I figured that if I got the written work in, then I could get up in the morning a little fresher and get the learning done in time for our 10:00 am session. Imperfect, but all being well, it would likely be just about good enough for a pass.

The work flew by and a little over an hour later I was finished. A rare super-short homework, although in fairness I had done some of it earlier in the week. I very badly wanted to hit send but knew better than to not proofread it first. Monsieur le professeur scans homework like an OCD sufferer cleans a sink, that is to say; thoroughly, meticulously, assiduously. I hit ‘print’ instead, snatched up the pages and set to work. Thank God I did. I found an error on two of the six pages that I was about to send, so I corrected them, said a prayer of thanks for the decision to proofread, even though all I wanted to do was sleep, and finally hit ‘send’. The time was 22:17 and I was on my way up the wooden hill and off to the wonderous, magical land of nod!

****

The next morning, I woke at the usual time of 06:00 and more or less straight away set about learning the pages of vocabulary I had sent to Mon Prof, the previous evening. I intended to spend two or three hours bashing the new words, their spellings, and of course the wretched conjugations of all of the verbs across the five tenses that we had painstakingly gone over.

It started well, but I quickly found three or four more ‘cut and paste’ errors in the pages that I had already handed in. Dilemma. If he checks the homework as carefully as he usually does, then I’ll be heavily criticised at the very least for handing in poor quality homework. If I correct my mistakes and send him the updated versions, then he will definitely get after me for having handed in substandard homework. This would not be a first offence; it wouldn’t even be the second or the third… decisions, decisions.

The real question was; what is the right thing to do? That was blindingly obvious. Given I had noticed the errors, I should correct and re-submit them at the earliest opportunity. That would be right now, but in doing that I would certainly be reprimanded and very likely worse. There is still a chance that he won’t have time to take a proper look at those sheets before your lesson… I wisely elected to not listen to the ‘bad-idea bear’ who was incessantly lobbying for the path of least resistance. Instead, I corrected the second round of mistakes and submitted the new sheets with a brief and polite apology:

Subject: **Corrected version JJ French HWK 03.12.21

Good morning, sir,

Please accept my apologies, I found several errors in vocabulaire #5 that I did not see when proofing last night. I've attached the ammended [sic] document and hope I have it right, now. I've also re-attached #4 for convenience.

See you soon!

Best (s)Wishes

Jacqui James

I was so tired from the past week’s endeavours at work, that I didn’t see the obvious spelling error in my covering email - the lesser spotted double ‘m’ in amended! The signs were there…

I continued vocab-bashing for another 45-minutes before coming across some more spelling and grammatical errors in my homework. Oh fuck, I’m dead. If I was being entirely honest with myself, I had been unlikely to evade punishment for having to hand in the first corrected version earlier that morning (obviously well after the midnight deadline). So, it wasn’t a difficult decision to stick with my original policy of correcting the mistakes and apologising. You might be let off with just the one round of corrections, Jacqs, but if you hand in another, it will be curtains for you! My bad-idea bear really is a total dick! I made the corrections and it was time for another email.

Subject: Yet another iteration...

Morning, sir...

... at the risk of extreme parody; please find attached another iteration of the troublesome vocabulaire #5 - if there are any remaining mistakes, I give up.

Best (s)Wishes

Jacqui James

Feeling more than a little deflated now that I was certain I was going to be punished, I thought about leaving my vocab learning and doing an hour of paid work before my lesson. Now that I was already in trouble… you might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb! Recognising that that was the very bad-idea bear lobbying me once more, I shook it off and continued with the second part of my homework. Choosing to not make this any worse than it was already going to be. There was of course a test of this learning that I hadn’t yet completed, taking place this morning and sentences are rarely served concurrently in the realms of all things corporal punishment.

I had to curtail my conjugation learning or else I would also have made myself late to the lesson. This only ever ends one way, though mercifully, it only took me one go to figure out the certain outcome for repeat offences in this regard. I was caned the first time I was late to class and it worked too as I haven’t been late since. At the time of writing, I’ve had 65 lessons and have been late just the once. It wasn’t actually the caning that deterred me as it was only two strokes, it was the promise of that number doubling each time I was subsequently late that put a stop to my tardiness. That kind of consistency means that sooner or later you simply cannot be late. I quickly worked out how many times I could afford to be late ever and then promptly decided that never again would be the best outcome. The credit for this miraculous turn around goes unreservedly to my teacher. How can I be so sure? Easy, because I am still approximately one minute late everywhere else that I go. No caning = no caring about clocks for Jacqui!

I showered and hurriedly changed into my school uniform, put on my horrendous school shoes - I’m still not properly over them - and bolted for the schoolroom. My HoH was glowering at me from the sitting room as he sat clock-watching and cane clutching. He knew I was cutting this one mighty, mighty fine. I logged on and was just tucking my shirt in as the lesson went live! Seconds in it. Seconds.

“I have been sent several versions of your homework, Jacqui and I’m not very happy about it. I have to praise you for correcting your mistakes but it doesn’t quite meet standards and you will be punished for it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Having handed in homework that does not at all meet standards [sigh] 12 with the slipper.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you. I’m afraid my HoH isn’t well today, sir, so we could either commute this to something else, or do it on Tuesday during our handwriting lesson?”

“You will give my best to your HoH and we’ll do this on Tuesday.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“I will set you a good and proper writing task to focus your mind on handing in proper homework!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s look over your homework now. If it was a book, it would be called ‘Jacqui’s Homework 3^rd revised and updated edition!’ We will take a good look at your vocabulary.”

Notice that sigh back there? Always present before the sentence is handed down; as reliable as clockwork - his, not mine. As for the ‘good look at your vocabulary’ he was properly enjoying himself. Once again from his perspective, what are the chances that a student who has only realised a catalogue of errors in her vocabulary sheets on the morning of the test, having learned those words terribly well? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be a teacher, do you?

I was seriously rattled now, already on a postponed slippering and some other dodgy ‘writing task’ and we hadn’t even started to take apart the second, (and arguably more important), part of the homework assignment. I took a very deep breath and knuckled down to it resolving to not concede any more goals in this lesson. Being two down after two minutes wasn’t very funny.

The test actually went rather well, especially considering almost everything that I knew had been learned that morning. But I am used to having to learn lines - rapidly changing lines if it is a new play - rather quickly and over the years I have acquired some pretty decent strategies. By my fag-packet calculations, I was on around 95 percent accuracy. (When I later checked back, I had scored 94 out of 96 - or 98 percent (rounded) of the official questions and had managed to answer a good deal of sir’s ‘additional’ questions correctly also). Feeling pretty smug that Mon Prof hadn’t had the free lunch that he very likely had been anticipating, I relaxed some and even tried a little levity. Sir wasn’t on precisely the same page, however.

“Vocabulaire #5 worked quite well, #4 not so much. Do you remember what I said last week about the cane?”

“Er, no, sir.” Where’s he going with this?

“I will remind you: ‘For every one you get wrong; you will receive one stroke of the cane.’ I counted two of them. You will add two cane strokes to the list for your HoH.”

“I thought that was only for the gender of the nouns, sir and I got 100 percent on that!”

“It was about vocabulary, Jacqui, and I didn’t include the ones where you were hesitant, only the two that didn’t work at all.”

“Sir, I don’t think you’ve heard Mr. Macron’s speech. He said that as of the 1^st of December, all French nouns would be identifying as non-binary, a kind of gender fluidity and therefore I can ‘le’ or ‘la’ whichever ones I want.”

“But you didn’t misgender any of the 96 words, Jacqui. Your two errors were failing to conjugate ‘savoir’ and not being able to distinguish between ‘au-dessous’ and ‘au-dessus.’”

“Send for the executioner, why don’t you?”

“Let’s make sure this homework thing will remain a single instance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will write this down: ‘Je dois faire mes devoirs correctement, toujours.’”

“I’ve written it, sir.”

“Good, keep writing it.”

“Er… yes, sir.”

“Ah! I missed the opportunity to say: ‘You’ll keep writing it until I tell you to stop.’”

“Yes, sir. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of opportunity in the future.”

“Yes, plenty.”

I wrote lines for the remainder of the lesson, a good 45-minutes or so.

“How many lines have you written?”

“I dunno, sir. Do you want me to count them?”

“Yes.”

“60, sir.”

“Up them to 75 and next week we’ll test this vocab again as well as vocab sheets #1, #2 and #3 and we’ll see how it goes from then.”

I bid him farewell and he wished me a pleasant weekend. The first thing I did after the lesson terminated was complete the lines, whilst I figured out how best to break the news to my HoH. This, I fancied, was not going to go well, not well at all…

Breaking the news in the kitchen to my slightly green about the gills HoH was a fraught affair. I was perfectly calm, factual, and apologetic having already accepted responsibility for my shortcomings and the corresponding discipline. I wasn’t at all perturbed by it, after all, 12 with the slipper and 2 with the cane wasn’t anything show-stopping. Speaking candidly, I had received much, much more discipline than that in one go and many, many times. I’d already completed the lines well enough and frankly I was pretty cock-a-hoop about netting 98 percent on a test where had I learned almost all of it only that morning. Yes, I had lost the match, but I’d scored the odd decent goal and played reasonably well despite my preparation being decidedly dodgy.

Sir did not see it that way. He blew a gasket. Lateness, poor homework, and disrespect are his three hobby-horses (the greedy git). I understand why all of these things are important but I’d already been told off, had complied with half of the punishment and was fully prepared to get the other half done on Tuesday. Indeed, the only thing I was worried about was how the hell I was going to fit in learning all five sets of vocabulary properly by this time next week. That certainly couldn’t all be left until the morning before and I, of course, needed to go back over all of those sheets and check for any further errors.

Despite my gentle, muted protestations, my HoH rumbled on and on about the homework, he also wasn’t pleased about the two strokes of the cane. I explained that I’d earned them essentially for cockiness rather than for ‘only’ getting 98 percent on the test. I ought to have kept my mouth shut as the admission of presenting at school with a cocky attitude was apparently even worse than the rest of it. Clearly, I wasn’t going to win, or even just not lose, anything today. My HoH was poorly and far from at his best, so I cut a very gentle, contrite figure for the remainder of the day and spent the rest of the time when I wasn’t being barracked, figuring out a plan to get the work properly completed by next Friday.

It wasn’t until about Sunday night that I even gave the impending corporal punishment a second thought. Four days was actually a pretty long time to wait for discipline, especially these days where I spend 24/7, 365 with my disciplinarian. I pondered that I hadn’t had a wait like this for a very long time indeed. Perhaps as far back as my first marathon in September 2019? That, of course, was without the added embarrassment of a witness.

I experienced several flickers of nervousness over the next few days. Not so much worried about the discomfort of what was to come, but more about having concern for not embarrassing myself any more than absolutely necessary over a relatively small amount of physical discipline. I am not suggesting that the pain was of no concern, it was. Knowing that you are going to be hurt is unpleasant indeed and carrying that over several days is not easy. However, I reasoned that this particular wait was no one’s fault, it wasn’t part of the punishment, as my teacher couldn’t have foreseen my HoH not being well enough to discipline me on the Friday and I certainly would have wanted to get it all over with as quickly as possible. I’m not a fan of waiting for anything and waiting for discipline is one of my least favourite things. As for my HoH, he couldn’t help being unwell.

Tuesday finally rolled around and I have to say, the worse part of the entire weekend had been the constant hectoring from Mr. James. He’d properly recovered from his bout of Dengue Fever by around tea-time on the Saturday, and if I thought I had gotten a bit of a raw deal on the Friday from him, I couldn’t have been more wrong if Sunday and Monday were anything to go by. He wanted to ring my neck. I was so fed up of the incessant chastisement that I very well couldn’t wait for my slippering. I was borderline looking forward to it, if nothing else it would at least shut Captain Peck Head up!

I arrived at my lesson in the nick of time, I’m sorry to say I did cut it very fine once more but in; is in and I was there, where I should have been, when I should have been. After the pleasantries, my teacher got straight on with critiquing my handwriting homework, an altogether different experience to the typical French class barracking.

“It’s really neat, I wanted a quality that I could hang on my wall. This is good. I would have a hard time finding a real problem with it. There is some variety in width and spacing, but it’s really minimal. What impresses me is your consistency, especially with the repeated phrases in this poem. [The Charge of the Light Brigade].”

Whilst it was nice to hear that he was pleased with my homework and he made some good points that I was able to note down to help me to improve next week’s work, I was actually dying to get the outstanding discipline completed. The longest THE WAIT in recent history, was less about fear and embarrassment and more about shutting my HoH up about this once and for all.

We have a rule as a couple, that once justice has been delivered that is the end of the matter. It is a wonderful device as it prevents all of that vulgar bickering that most vanilla couples indulge in. You know, the one where they recall each other’s misdemeanours from 1993 or 2004. We have none of that, none whatsoever and for that I am truly grateful. Of course, sir has the right to revisit past crimes of mine any time he wishes, however he chooses only to do this when discussing repeat offences, which is absolutely fair enough. Repeats really shouldn’t happen and I have no problems with being re-dragged through the mud on any of these points.

Meanwhile, the homework de-brief went on…

“In general, this works and that makes me very, very happy. It’s a quality I would hang in my office, I wouldn’t be ashamed. I would only be ashamed if someone asked me if it were mine. No, I couldn’t do it that well even if I tried really, really hard.”

At this point I thought he had either forgotten about the outstanding punishment, or that he might have bottled it. About five percent of me wanted to brush it under the carpet, but the rest of me wanted this interminable wait to be over. I resolved to not let him crack on with the lesson without addressing the T-Rex in the virtual classroom. But I needn’t have worried!

“We still have some unpleasant business to take care of, best to get it out of the way and let justice be served.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I didn’t want to say: ‘Hi, how was your weekend?’ And then jump straight into discipline.”

“Yes, sir. Is it safe to assume that there won’t be anything to add from this homework?”

“Yes, Jacqui, but there won’t be anything to subtract either!”

“I wasn’t asking for that, sir. I just prefer things to all be accounted for at once. I’ll fetch him now, sir.”

I exited the schoolroom and ushered my HoH in from the sitting room. The two disciplinarians always do this talky thing where they exchange pleasantries, discuss what I’ve done wrong, and explain what the penalty is. It is excruciating. All of us always already know what I’ve done and what the outcome will be. I never argue about discipline, Mon Professeur is extremely consistent, there are almost never any surprises, and my HoH frickin’ lives with me. He knows exactly what I am like and that I require heaps of regular discipline in order to operate optimally. So, this bloody great pow-wow is the most awfully awkward part of the entire process. It’s like a mother’s meeting. Honestly, I can’t bear it and after waiting four frickin’ days for it I really could have done without it.

Alas, there they were prattling on leaving me to pace the corridor outside the schoolroom. Thank goodness I wasn’t told to stand facing the wall or something. I’m a pacer. Always was. I could be found before every ‘curtain-up’ I have ever faced, pacing. I must walk miles and miles during even only a 3-week run of shows! Eventually, the door opened and I was summoned. Thank fuck for that, I thought and I know that must seem strange but I really did want to get this the hell over with. Running away would only exacerbate the problem, there would then be a further delay. When one is certain that punishment is going to take place, it is always better to get it over and done with as swiftly as possible. I was genuinely eager to just get this done.

I knew I was in for a difficult little session though. I was stood in my delightful school uniform complete with those absolutely atrocious argyle knee socks, my back to the camera and my front facing the captain’s chair. My HoH instructed me to bend over and as he rearranged my skirt and tugged down my white cotton knickers to just below the crease he said:

“You are to inform me at once if you feel faint, dizzy, or otherwise unwell and you do not need to ask before standing up if you are in any danger.”

Sounds lovely, but what it really translates as is: ‘You’re going to get it good.’

The slippering began briskly as he slapped that bally grey gym shoe into my naked nates. He wasn’t playing with me. It was actually pretty rough and with some strangely placed pauses at numbers five and nine. I also remember having to be told to speak up at around number two, when counting and thanking. Not because my HoH couldn’t hear me, but because he was concerned that my teacher mightn’t be able to. I adjusted my own volume and we cracked on. The pause at number 11 was purely for indulgent effect, signalling that the last one would be a greater effort - it duly was.

Next came the cane and my HoH, of course, milked it for all it was worth. I, meanwhile, was down low over the back of the captain’s chair with the back of it cutting into my hips at the perfect height. Bare bottom on full display and no doubt shining bright red by now. All I can remember thinking, and I’m not proud of this, but it is exactly what I thought, was: For fuck’s sake, get on with it! I will even admit to rolling my eyes - obviously out of sight of both gentlemen - as my HoH indulged in a cane swish before beginning the ‘line-up’ or the ‘tap-tap,’ depending on your linguistic preferences. My sir was clearly enjoying his niche little role in this morning’s little play for today and I can’t say I blame him. I suppose there have to be some perks to putting up with living with me full time. I did, however really, really want to put this longest of long waits behind me and get the hell on with my handwriting lesson - ordinarily a far more sedate affair.

“One, sir, thank you,” I intoned without flinching. The stroke actually cut pretty effectively, but I was thoroughly warmed from the slippering and completely undaunted by the low number of strokes coming my way. It enabled me to be almost entirely unconcerned about how harsh the strokes would be. He could quite frankly have hit me as hard as he liked with that cane twice and I knew I’d still be able to do it without flinching. That is not to say I could go much further in this manner, but I knew that short of some almost inconceivable foul-up that it would only be two swishes today.

As the premier stroke was doing its searing and throbbing thing, sir lined up the second. My role was pretty straight forward from here. Don’t move and don’t forget your line. Pretty much like being back in the theatre!

“Two, sir, thank you,” I belted out in my chest voice. Delighted that this little episode was all but concluded. The second one was a seriously good stroke. The junior cane, whippy as it is, sprung right up and over my back immediately post impact. A sign that my HoH was wielding it rather nicely. Ordinarily, that would have had me cowering some, particularly if there was a long way to go. But as today was a token caning for cockiness, I put a fraction of that cockiness to better use and shielded myself from any potential angst. I could feel the welt of the second stroke, a good inch below the first and rising rapidly. That one would be around for a fair few days!

“You may get up when you are ready and dress yourself properly,” came my HoH’s instructions. I didn’t mess about, stood straight up, white school knickers somewhat carefully pulled up, and skirt smoothed back down. Jem left the office, bidding Mon Prof a good day and I returned to my desk to proceed with the lesson.

“I assume that you are warm and comfortable - or at least warm and uncomfortable, Jacqui?”

“Yes, sir,” I grinned at my teacher, totally relaxed now that the sentence was complete and I knew that Captain Peck Head would have to shut the hell up about it. I’m not being rude about my teacher’s discipline; it is always impeccably judged and I have to say Jem delivers what is required rather nicely also. It works very well indeed. However, the most trying part of this event was the unintentional four day wait and my sir’s endless badgering. Although, not the longest THE WAIT ever in terms of the number of days, in terms of the years of my life that I probably lost through Jem’s harassment, it was the longest wait of all and by some distance!

“You will write a text on the effectiveness of corporal punishment,” continued my teacher.

“Yes, sir,” I replied making sure to settle to it quickly and quietly. That was the most wonderful part of the previous four days; the peace and quiet that descended as I set about drafting my mini-essay. Despite being rather warm and a tad uncomfortable sat on my bruised nether regions, I was perfectly happy, contented, and grateful for some serious peace and quiet!

**That was a chapter from SIX OF THE BEST 2021**

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