Ten years on and local boy Hughie brings his new girlfriend to meet his mother for the first time. “Very nice to meet you Mrs. Logan”, she smiles sweetly, on her best behaviour. “Lovely to meet you Tina.”
Hughie and Tina settle down on the sofa as his mother makes tea. They are both naturally nervous, hoping that his mother will like her. When the conversation goes well they start to relax a little. Hughie is very pleased with Tina who is really charming his mother as he’d hoped she would.
“I must congratulate you on bringing up such a well behaved boy Mrs Logan”, Tina continues flattering her. “Well it wasn’t always easy”, his mother responds and gets up from her chair to reach up to the book shelves. She takes down a photo album. “Mother no!” Hughie interjects.
“Oh goodie! The baby pictures!” Tina grins in anticipation of this traditional embarrassment of a boyfriend by his mother. “Mum, really! Please!” “Don’t be silly Hughie”, Tina tries to ease his clear nervousness, “it’s just a bit of fun.”
She opens the photo album with an anticipatory grin which then freezes. “Ehm …. he’s wearing a dress and bonnet! … Wait! … How old is he in these?!” Hughie’s head is in his hands.
Tina flicks the stiff page of the album over. Hughie’s wearing two different frilly baby dresses with matching bonnets, booties and tights and he’s suc-king on a soother as he looks up from a play-pen. But it’s clearly not the chubby face of a baby. Although his legs are splayed wide presumably by a thick nappy, they are not the short fat legs of a baby. In the third photo she recognises the furniture of the room they are sitting in and it is clear that she is looking at a very big baby in the photos.
She looks up at Mrs Logan in astonishment. “We had a little trouble with Hughie’s behaviour when he was a teenager”, she explains. The stunned Tina turns over another page to see Hughie crawling away from the camera and there is no doubt that below the thick frills across his bottom is a very thick nappy.
“A little time in nappies and baby dresses sorted the problem out eventually.” In the next photo Hughie was in a pink fleecy sleeper looking out through the bars of a large cot. Tina flicked back to the photos with the play-pen and could see that this nursery furniture was clearly made larger to accommodate a teenage boy with room to spare.
“Unorthodox I know”, his mother continued, “but as you can see it was very effective.” Tina flicked over another page. Hughie was standing in a pink frilly dress, flared from breast level over several layers of petticoats which only barely covered his bottom. He was wearing pink tights, lacey ankle socks and pink Mary Janes with big bows on the toes. His bonnets had been replaced by two big pink bows pinned either side of the back of his curly hair. A soother was pinned to his dress, dangling unused but, presumably, threatening. Hughie clutched a very large doll in a matching pink dress.
In the next photo, Hughie was in the same outfit but was reaching up to catch a balloon so that his dress rode up revealing a less dramatic bulge beneath his pink pettipants – presumably disposable pull-ups. “So as his behaviour improved he was allowed to grow up a little.”
Tina turned another page. “Oh that was at a cousin’s birthday party!” Hughie was wearing a lilac polka dot dress that came half way to his knees, floral patterned white tights and t-bar shoes with a two-inch heel. He had a frilly pinafore over his dress trimmed with perky lace over his shoulders.
Tina estimated that the birthday girl blowing out the candles in the picture was about eight – as were most of the other children in the photo. The girls were clearly beyond the stage of wearing pretty dresses to please their mothers and many wore slacks so Hughie, despite towering over them, wore by far the prettiest and most juvenile dress.
In the next photo, taken at the same party, Hughie had reached the top of the ladder of a garden slide and was bent over desperately clutching the bars at the top. A queue of children lined up behind were all looking up and pointing and laughing at the view up under his petticoats.
Then Hughie was in a relatively sombre pink gingham school uniform, white ankle socks and his hair in pigtails tied with pink gingham ribbons. He was standing beside an old-fashioned wooden school desk but it was the only one in the room with a small blackboard on an easel in front of it. Tina could see that the garden out through the windows was the same one she could see from her place on the sofa.
In the next photo Hughie was writing across the top of the blackboard. In reaching up his dress rode up and white frills peeked below. He was completing the line “If I don’t behave I will be spanked.” Then Tina noticed the paddle resting on the desk behind him. His rosy red cheeks appeared to be wet.
In the last picture Hughie was sitting on a plastic chair behind a table in the same room. He was wearing a navy gymslip and was writing earnestly with what looked like an exam paper on the table. His legs were crossed and Tina could see a suspender strap clipped to the top of his black stocking. His hair was tied in pony tails with navy ribbons. His gymslip bulged over a fine bust and he displayed a lovely slim waist. His heels must have been a good four-inches. His face was fully made-up with lipstick, blush, and false eyelashes. His fingers gripping the pen had long scarlet nails.
“But you can see that we ended up with a fine well behaved polite young man”, Mrs Logan reminded her. Hughie was staring at the carpet. Tina was still quite shocked but smiled at him. She took his hand and squeezed it. He was just relieved that she hadn’t stormed out in outrage but she knew his excruciating secret now.
Topic: Home-schooling (Read 33248 times)
