Sparkle was always a tiny bit embarrassed about her name. Her Da and Ma loved her to distraction, along with her four brothers and five sisters, but as the baby of the family she felt a bit ill-used.
Her name was not Sparkle, of course. Who calls a child Sparkle in the year of Our Lord 1889? But what really made her uncomfortable was her legal name, the one written on her birth certificate, which was Spankleberry Finn O’Toole.
Sparkle’s father, Liam Talliaferro O’Toole, made his not so small fortune in America after coming over from Ireland with his wife, one son and one daughter, and then parlayed his whisky making connections back home into a thriving commerce. At first he sold poteen smuggled into the harbor disguised in vegetable oil drums, and then expanded to more drinkable and legal varieties of spirits.
Liam was a well read man, and loved American writers, especially Mark Twain, and when he saw his newest child he chuckled at the shine in her bright blue eyes, but was a bit wayward with the pen when he wrote her name down for the nurse, and rather than Sparkleberry Finn (he was a Finn on his maternal grandmother’s side) the transcribing secretary read Spankleberry instead, and so according to her birth certificate and the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that was her name.
No one in the family paid any attention to that, and called the baby Sparkle, as her dad wished, and that eventually was shortened to Sparky or Spar.
Her eldest brother Lochinvar (her Da knew Scott as well) was 14 years old when Sparkle was born, and took an especial interest in the little girl. It was he who soothed Sparky’s troubled mind after Da told her that she was of age and so would, like all the O’Toole girls before her, leave home and attend Miss Minerva’s Academy for Young Ladies of Gentle Hibernian Families, located in rural Ulster County, New York.
Sparkle was greatly concerned about the tales her big sisters told when they came home on holiday, of sharp tellings-off, and even sharper hidings from the masters and mistresses at school. She had to ask what a hiding was, and Lochinvar, now a police detective in Wellesley, told her that it was much the same as the spankings she had got from Ma and Da when she didn’t mind them, and sometimes too from Lochinvar, or Lucky as everyone called him, though more gently and briefly than from Ma or Da, while she was growing up. Sparkle’s eyes grew wide, and she silently prayed that no school master or mistress ever would need to touch her in that way.
She vowed to herself and to Lucky that she would behave, and learn everything they taught her, no matter how foolish it seemed. And yet somehow when she arrived at the school a change came over her.
The school building was a large, rambling Colonial affair, with several classrooms, a huge kitchen and refectory, as well as studies and bed-sits for the faculty. The girls slept in dormitories, a dozen to a room, in a long, refurbished army barracks located down a short lane from the main house. The barracks was built during the Civil War for officers who took their training in field artillery maneuvers amongst the woods and meadows of the estate.
So perhaps it was the call of distant bugles, or simply the unaccustomed absence of parental authority; maybe it was the country air, or the pollen of unfamiliar flora. But the most likely cause of Sparkle’s descent into naughtiness was a combination of keeping bad company, along with the actions of a somewhat insensitive faculty member.
Upon her arrival at Miss Minerva’s Academy for Young Ladies of Gentle Hibernian Families, Sparkle befriended Bridget Shaughnessy, a rather wild-eyed young minx whose people had recently emigrated from Dublin. It was rumored that Bridget’s father had been asked and strongly encouraged to emigrate, owing to dubious business practices, but since he paid two years’ tuition in advance and in cash no questions were asked, and Bridget was welcomed at the school with open arms.
Soon Sparkle began to talk like Bridget, affecting a rather slothful drawl when speaking to faculty and staff members, and along with it a somewhat mocking tone that bordered on impudence without quite crossing the line.
Miss Minerva Kennedy, the academy principal, knew all the O’Toole girls, and knew them to be well behaved in general, but none were particularly quiet, and all had large reserves of energy that needed to be channeled in the proper direction. Sparkle’s next oldest sister Colleen Marie had graduated the spring before, and upon reflection, the principal realized that each successive O’Toole girl had needed more and sterner discipline than the one before her, so she made a note in her student roster to keep an especial eye on this, the final O’Toole.
Bridget had made an arrangement with a nearby farmer to supply her with wine, which she hid in a disused shed behind the dormitory building. After a rather long while, she convinced Sparkle to sneak out of the dorm with her late at night, and they often sat under the bright stars and talked and drank until they both were more than a bit tipsy.
After one such late night rouse, the next day Sparkle felt more than a bit under the weather, and that morning in Mr. Gammon’s poetry class she nodded off. Noting this, a serious breach of decorum and etiquette at best, and even worse because Sparkle’s soft snores interrupted what he felt was a unique and eloquent discourse on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Mr. Gammon quite lost his temper, picked up a two-foot wooden ruler, and clapped a sound like a pistol shot from the flat surface of his lectern.
All the girls jumped, and Sparkle squealed and jumped, then shrank back in her chair before the withering glare directed at her by Mr. Gammon.
“Spankleberry Finn O’Toole, what is the meaning of this outrage?” He stepped off the dais, the ruler still clutched in his hand, and advanced on the terrified girl. “Stand up at once, young woman.”
Never before had Sparkle been addressed by all three legal names, a common practice at Miss Minerva’s establishment for getting a girl’s attention and letting her know that matters in hand had taken a serious turn. She whimpered and rose, and looked in desperation to Bridget for support, but the girl merely giggled, grinned, and mouthed, Spankleberry?
Her face, hot and pink already at being called out, burned red with shame at her friend’s derision. Angry and frustrated, she stamped the floor, and Mr. Gammon jerked back in astonishment.
“Whatever has gotten into you?” he demanded, and grabbed a handful of her middy blouse collar.
All the girls wore the loose blouses, along with a pleated white skirt of light wool that covered the tops of dainty black lace up boots. Beneath the skirt they wore a single long petticoat of muslin, stiffened with sizing to give the skirt added fullness, and under this, stockings gartered just above the knees, and a combination or union suit of cotton. This suit was both chemise and drawers, and covered the girl from shoulder to knee, with a utilitarian opening at the back of the drawers. A light corset cinched the girl’s waist, and supported her breasts from beneath.
Mr. Gammon yanked Sparkle around to face the class, holding her up by the collar at the back of her neck like a puppy.
“You do not stomp your foot at me, miss, ever! The very idea! Showing a temper when it is you who have transgressed! Where is your modesty, young woman, where are your manners, for heaven’s sake? The principal warned me about you, and now I see why.”
“But sir, I meant no disrespect, sir! I only …”
“No disrespect? Bah!”
Mr. Gammon was not a terribly powerful man, nor a very large man, but he was an angry man and taller than Sparkle, and he loomed over her, glaring. Her chin was forced downward by the hand at the back of her head, grasping her collar and giving it an occasional shake, so her eyes were made to rise in order to meet his. She clasped her hands before her, adding to the picture of piteous supplication.
“Please, Mr. Gammon, I don’t feel at all well. Mightn’t I return to the dormitory and …?”
“You will return when I have had done with you, girl! The very idea!”
Sparkle squeaked when he spun her around and pushed her forward. She had witnessed such summary classroom chastisements, watched them between fingers pressed to her eyes, but never yet had she been on the receiving end, and she struggled to catch her breath when Mr. Gammon leaned his left hand on her back to force her upper body onto the desktop.
He reached down and quickly furled both her skirt and petticoat up and over, and Sparkle wailed loudly when she felt cool air up the legs of her combination, and through the slightly parted slit at the rear.
“Save that noise if you please, Miss O’Toole, until you need it.”
The ruler struck with a muffled whack across the fullest part of Sparkle’s behind, and she wailed again and stamped her feet, both in anger and to dissipate the sting in her bottom that grew rapidly with each ensuing clap of the sturdy wood.
Over and over Mr. Gammon swatted, higher and higher went her feet when she stamped, and wider and wider grew the parting at the rear of Sparkle’s union suit because of it, such that the ruler stung more and more exposed skin. The other girls, audience to her shame, blushed at the scandalous presentation, pressed fearful palms to palpating bosoms, but then leant forward the better to observe the awful spectacle before their eyes.
Mr. Gammon pressed hard on Sparkle’s back to hold her in place, but the strong girl, spurred by frightfully embarrassed agitation at the unseemly exposure behind, twisted free, covered her face with her hands, and backed toward the wall while her skirts fell to hide the source of her shame. Her punisher, still fuming, brandished the ruler for a moment at the retreating girl, and then flung the hot implement aside, and stalked over to grab her once again by the collar.
“We shall see what the principal has to say about your deportment and your refusal to accept discipline, Miss O’Toole!”
Sparkle’s bottom cooled slightly from the awful sting, but her moral dread mounted with every step of the long, horrid trek along the corridor and then down the stairs to Miss Minerva’s study. Mr. Gammon hesitated but a heartbeat when he entered the anteroom, nodded briefly to Miss Rhys, Miss Minerva’s secretary, who scarcely had time to look up from her type writing before Mr. Gammon opened the door to the sanctum sanctorum, hauled Sparkle inside, and shut the door behind them.
Miss Minerva’s eyes widened just slightly at the sight of the two red-faced individuals who had invaded her privacy, and nodded to the older of them.
“Mr. Gammon?”
He took a long breath, and then let go Sparkle’s collar and made a slight bow. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Minerva, but this young girl has … well she has been impertinent and disrespectful beyond all belief, and when I attempted to admonish her, she refused to stand still and accept her correction. Ma’am.”
“What?” Miss Minerva’s eyes narrowed tightly, and Sparkle shook her head, unable to speak for the tumult of emotion in her head. “I might have known.” The woman stood and rounded her desk, taking a long, whippy birch wand from a nearby umbrella stand. “Well, Miss O’Toole? What have you to say for yourself?”
The girl gasped and stammered, shaking her head and searching for words.
“Puh-please, ma’am, he … I … it was only a little wine, and I … that is, I mean I didn’t mean to fall asleep, ma’am, and … and my drawers, ma’am, they opened so, and … everyone would see my … my … and I was ashamed!”
Miss Minerva tutted, glanced at Mr. Gammon, and then pointed with the switch at a low backed guest chair. “Bend over with your hands on the seat of that, child. I’ll soon get to the bottom of this.” She smirked when Mr. Gammon covered a smile with his hand, and she flicked a finger at him. “If you would assist me, sir?”
He nodded and quickly helped the girl, despite her fearful physical and verbal demurrals, to assume the position Miss Minerva required. At a further signal from the principal, Mr. Gammon once more lifted Sparkle’s skirts, to the accompaniment of distressful wails.
“Hush, girl,” Miss Minerva ordered. “Now tell me more of this wine you mentioned.”
Sparkle’s mind whirled with unaccustomed anxiety, her fists balled on the cushioned seat of the chair, her lower limbs squeezed tightly together while she willed the horrid parting in her nether garment together to preserve her modesty while she framed an answer.
“I don’t know why I said that, ma’am. There was no wine, Miss Minerva. I misspoke.”
The woman shook her head and raised the switch. She hesitated only an instant, and in that instant Mr. Gammon read the meaningful flinch in Miss Minerva’s eyebrow, and parted wide the slit in Sparkle’s undergarment.
With a terrible whirr, the switch struck completely bare hind flesh, and Sparkle shrieked. The hot sting made her rise, but Mr. Gammon held her close round the waist, still bended, still vulnerable, and grappled her arms to her sides when she attempted to reach back and soothe the burn that grew across the switch’s path.
“You shall not lie to me, girl.” Miss Minerva lashed again, and Sparkle squealed. “Who gave you wine? Hm?”
She flicked the wand, more lightly, and Sparkle twitched, moaned, and shook her head, tears streaming from her eyes.
“P-please let me go, ma’am, and I won’t ever do it again, I swear, only don’t look at … at my … ahow!”
The switch zinged and thipped, again and again, while Sparkle shrieked and kicked.
“The wine, girl. Where did you get it? Tell me!”
Dozens of whippy strokes stung Sparkle’s backside through to its core, and her supposed friend’s treacherous smile and awful, unvoiced word appeared in Sparkle’s mind’s eye while the hurt grew in her fundament.
“It was Bridget, ma’am! She gave me wine! I’m sorry! Please let go and I shall never do it again, I swear to God!”
Miss Minerva traded knowing nods with Mr. Gammon. “Bridget Shaughnessy gave you wine?”
“Yes, ma’am, and … and made me sneak out of bed at night and … and …”
She closed her mouth when the thrashing halted, and shook her head whilst tears flooded from her eyes. Then long, horrid moments passed as she waited, skirts held up with tremulous arms by fearsome direction, her sore, red bottom horribly displayed, in the corner by the window in back of Miss Minerva’s desk.
Mr. Gammon left, his instructions from Miss Minerva clear, and the principal poured and drank off a small glass of sherry from a carafe on the sideboard, and then flexed the switch and set her jaw when Mr. Gammon tapped the door and entered, accompanied by Miss Rhys, a rather heavy set woman of Welsh and English stock, and another, much younger and more slender woman.
“Here she is, ma’am,” Mr. Gammon said, and pulled Bridget along by her arm.
The girl glared and stamped her feet, and before Miss Minerva’s questioning she vehemently disavowed any knowledge of wine, or late night sneaking out, or any other wrongdoing.
Miss Minerva turned skeptically, and reached over to tap the switch on Sparkle’s red-hot bum. “Did you lie to me, Miss O’Toole? Is Miss Shaugnessy guiltless of your accusations?”
Sparkle keenly felt her erstwhile friend’s pleading eyes at the back of her head, but even more keenly the harshness of the twig against her stinging flesh, and shook her head sadly.
Bridget screamed, and cursed, and threatened awful and unlikely retribution for the longest time while Mr. Gammon and Miss Rhys held her over the chair and Miss Minerva thrashed her bare behind. But in the end she pleaded for clemency and promised never, ever to act bad again, or to sneak out, or to drink wine, or to lead other students astray. Finally Miss Minerva relented, and put the wand away.
Dev, thank you, a fine postprandial read.
May I hope for further Sparkleberry adventures?
The term “rigid and unrelenting goodness,” always makes me somewhat apprehensive, it tends to mean that my right arm will have more exercise then it’s accustomed to.
No rush, Tuesday will do.
Paul.
Oh no, what a horribly day of hangover the poor Sparkle got :-0
That was a great story, I was giggling (nervously) the whole time I read it
Hmmm… Sparkle kind of reminds me of myself. You know, one day if there will be a theatre piece of this story, I might apply to act Sparkle, since I´m gonna be an actress anyways starting tomorrow, when I start my theatre lessons 
I love the picture at the beginning of the story! What a cute but sneaky looking girl
MUST live this! I have to read it again with a glass of red wine… Mmmmm
XXX
Maria
Thanks, Paul. Glad I could help with your digestion.
I don’t know if we’ll run into Spankleberry again. It was over a month ago in some thread or other that someone or several someones, I forget who, were talking about a possible Spankleberry Finn story and I said I would mull at it. I did and even started it, but then put it on the back burner. This was more or less a break from the new book, and also a reminder to readers that I still can string a few words together on my own.
Maria, as far as I’m concerned you’ve got the part, since you would be a natural. I was looking for a photo of a middy blouse, worn around the turn of the 20th century, and I found this on the web somewhere, unattributed. But the more I look at it the more I think it might be Hayley Mills in “Polyanna,” about 1957.
Feeling a fantasy-affinity with this sort of era, I absolutely found this spellbinding. How you accomplish such an engaging atmosphere so swiftly and boldly is astonishing to me.
I thought you were kidding when you said you’d do this, and wow, it’s just fantastic, sending quite a shiver of pleasure through me. Yum yum.
I love this. I love any girl that is so fantastically unable to learn her lesson. These girls would fit in perfectly around here.
Do you think they will visit at any point?
Thanks very, very much, Lorraine! Not to give away any trade secrets, but it might be the details that make the atmosphere. One reason I stopped writing when I did several weeks ago was that I rather wore myself out researching period dress. Anyhow I’m glad I could give you shivers. That’s always gratifying.
Poppy, thank you too, and these girls visit us every day, in spirit and under different names, yours being one of them.
Mm, I liked it!
Poppy’s right; those girls would fit in very well around here.
Shivery good story, Dev!
Very cute story, kind Sir.
Altho am thinking Sparkle simply chose the wrong activity to engage in with her friend. She needed something less obvious. I’d learned at an early age how to play Black Jack and could play that card game very well. And the cards can be handled very quietly. Always having a deck in my bookbag, I made sure to be early to a class that was boring and I knew the teacher would never notice me sitting at a desk all the way against the back wall of the room esp after 5 or more of the football players took seats in front and on each side of me (they were mostly the bigger linebacker types which made the perfect cover for me to deal the cards between us). It was an easy way for me to earn an extra $20. or more a week in add’l spending money (I made sure each of the guys won a fair share too – after all, they helped hide me from the teacher’s attention which was not difficult given that the classrooms in that high school avg’d 35 to 40 students per class – and we stayed very quiet). 
DN
DN,
You rock.
Thanks, Quel (have yet to look at your homework that FINALLY arrived) and Season! Glad you liked it.
DN, this getting away with naughtiness is not in your best interests, young lady. I doubt you could have been paddled, but detention and a good telling off would have been much better for you than your success at crime.
Seconds on what Poppy said; that’s awesome, DN! Wish I could’ve been so lucky! Sadly, I was home schooled and there wasn’t much chance of playing blackjack with my sibs.
By law, anyone that gets homeschooled has the right to school type japes for a ten year period of their choosing.
Don’t blame me, Dev. I can’t and won’t fight the law. I tried once and someone wrote a blumming song about it.
I need someone to come over.
There is a massive spider by the ironing board. It is huge. I think it is carrying a hatchet (or some other kind of axe.)
Whoever comes please bring a gun or one of those big things that shoots flames and a gun. And a canon.
It really is that big and neither of my dogs will eat it.
Sorry about the break in conversation.
That’s the universe’s way of telling you to not do any ironing today and probably to knock off doing chores of any kind. The universe wants you to have a nice happy beverage and perhaps a bit of chocolate. Enjoy!
Fabulous idea!
I could do with a cosmo. (or six)
Oh my! Spiders are horrible, hideous creatures, Poppy! You´d better have a cosmo (or six) to recover from the trauma :-/ You can´t kill a spider. If you kill a spider, your mom or dad will die :-0 That´s what they say!
Dev, Egres is reading this story right now, too
He also thinks Sparkle sounds like someone he knows…
-Maria
I think you’re right Poppy. I have heard of that law about ten years of schoolroom misbehaviour. I think I will get on that right away.
I agree with Season. One can’t fight the universe. If the universe tells you not to do chores who are you to argue?
If I were there I would catch the spider for you. I don’t kill spiders, though. I’ve worked with too many to feel comfortable about killing them anymore!
I’d like a cosmo, please, to celebrate turning in my homework. :p
Now, what can we get up to?
No cosmos on a school night, Poppy, although Season’s chocolate suggestion is certainly doable. And your creative reading of home-schooling law will do nothing except get your home-schooled little friends into some pretty hot water.
Quel, I think you should tell Poppy how to encourage the spider to leave the premises, say by promising it a big juicy fly just right outside in the garden – only she doesn’t speak spider and I suspect you might have a least a smattering.
Maria, thanks, and I hope Egres enjoys the story. I’m sure at least one of its characters has some quite familiar attributes.
Spider now encamped in the garage, happy and well.
I should send a housewarming gift.
Details. Thanks for the trade secret. Fascinating.
You’re welcome, Mr. Spock. Just don’t tell anyone.
All this talk of spiders has gotten me upset!! I have chores to do but … I just can’t !!!
I don’t even know what a cosmos is, but I’m sure I’d want one if I did.
Poppy, are you sure he is in the garage? I have a garage too and if spiders hang out there … maybe I shouldn’t go in ours until I’m sure it’s safe.
Of course the car is in the garage and I’m supposed to go get some things Adam wanted
You’ll help explain to Adam that I was just being “safe minded” if he gets upset … won’t you, Poppy?
Linde
Leonard Nimoy is on the blog?
That’s Haley Mills.
I think it’s from “In Search of the Castaways” though.
(I only know this because the movie used to have a spanking in it but when it was released to video they edited it out)
Thanks, Linde! I remember the title, but I can’t say for sure I ever saw the movie. I looked on IMBD and apparently the spanking you remember isn’t the only thing missing from the DVD – the whole first scene where they find the message in the bottle has gone AWOL.
Lorraine was channeling Spock earlier with her ‘fascinating’ remark.
Spiders in the garage, like Br’er Rabbit in the briar patch, are much to happy and contented to bother you, so carry on with your errands/
Cosmo
1 ounce vodka
1/2 ounce Triple Sec orange liqueur or Cointreau
1/2 ounce cranberry juice
Juice from 1/2 lime
I always use Cointreau and it is vital, vital, vital that it is icy cold. I freeze my glasses and fill my shaker with lots of ice.
Delicious.
The spiders use the garage as a portal to another world. They will not return. The other world has flies slow as honey and twice as tasty.
“… twice as tasty” Spiders?
OOOOOOOh, I don’t know about that!!
Do they only become tasty after they enter the portal in the garage?
I got confused and meant “flies” – sorry.
Dev changed it for me though.
i love deadlines. i like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
Mr. Spock, lol. “Phrases set on stun, Captain.”
Kristina, shall we take it you missed one, then?
Lorraine, you went where no one has gone before – for good reason.
yup – whooosh!
Deadlines are suggestions, much like stop signs.
That’s an original Quel quote, by the way.
Do you know what else is a suggestion, Quel? A good, hard, no nonsense, straighten up and fly right spanking on your bare bum is a suggestion that if you don’t mend your attitude you’ll not be sitting comfortably in the foreseeable future.
Kristina, please note the above.
I love the writings of Mark Twain and I love the writings of Devlin O’Neill, so to have them combined in a conflagration of sparkling {word intended} prose is pure heaven for me. Brilliant, Dev, absolutely brilliant! Thanks, Bro.
Calling all brats-
Suggestions of tips for Tops please.
If no one has any that is cool- I have several myself. But any you do have please send to
poppystvincent@yahoo.co.uk
Wow! Thanks, Michael!
How I love returning home to a school room with naughty girls and a delicious story–thanks, Dev! Your writing is much like you, I think: firm, authoritative, but ultimately lighthearted. It leaves me torn between wanting to be bad and wanting to be good, then wanting to be bad again…
Maria, you could definitely be Miss Sparkle!
Poppy, Tips for Tops? I only hope they’re the kind of tips I want to share with Roman…but I know I need have no fear! We can always trust Poppy’s Toppy Tips!
All Tips to be from brats please!
My Top tips should be not at all sensible!
I can get email but not send it. Grrrrr.
Imagine my relief to hear you say all tips are to be from brats only. The Tops think up enough evil things on their own!
Thanks, Lisa! Glad you enjoyed the story, and yes, the brats here took no sort of vacation from naughtiness while you were away. Also, as you see, Poppy is all set to be “helpful” (her term) to Tops once again.
I am glad that I did not go to a school where you were the headmaster, Dev. I might be much better behaved than I am today!
I find Poppy extremely helpful. I’m so glad she is keeping up her proud tradition of helping Tops!
Oh, and a note to Kristina on an earlier thread of conversation: I suggested both “Thor” and “Magnus” as potential blog names to my SO, both excellent ideas, thank you so much. He said that any man who goes around calling himself Thor is probably impotent. (Am I allowed to say that here, Dev? I’m just reporting what HE said. )
Magnus didn’t get a response, just a look. I think I properly interpreted it so I dropped that one. I’m going with Roman, since he seems to dislike it less than Fred.
Shwoo. Glad that problem is solved.
Lisa, I’m not sure any sort of headmaster, even a firm, authoritative, lighthearted one, would have made your long term behavior better, though I appreciate the compliment. Anyway I think it was a compliment.
Give my best regards to Roman.
What day is today? Oh gee!!
The week goes by way too fast and .. well, never mind.
My Top Tip for Tops Today is …..
Don’t be so inflexible when there is a holiday that messes up our regular schedule and throws things off. Would it hurt to just skip Wednesday and go directly to Thursday. Skip breakfast that you always eat at a certain time and maybe just relax and enjoy the world around you. Don’t fall into such a routine that you HAVE to do certain things on certain days and at certain times.
I mean … is there anything that can’t wait until next week?
Please send the bratmobile for a rescue mission, Poppy,
Hmm. Wednesday night must be on somebody’s mind.
wednesday’s child is full of woe
maybe you should change your date night?
I would say something witty and intelligent but I am editing.
I could use some distraction, though.
*giggles*
Jake left himself signed in when he went to bed.
Oh, the havoc I will wreak.
Any havoc wreaking ideas, girls?
Erm, and to clarify, that post was mine, not Jake’s. It can be deleted. *shakes head* I forgot to check if the name in the auto fill was mine or his.
confessions are always fun
That was great! You DO have a way with words, Dev. Seriously. I know that’s not a revelation to anybody here, myself included. But, you know, I never really paid that much attention to how writers write, or had the opportunity to get to know a really good writer before I started hanging out here. I have learned from you to appreciate the details. Really. Here are some of yours I liked: “clapped a sound like a pistol shot,” and “the switch…thipped.” I love the word thip. Is that a real word or did you make that up? And, like Paul, I really liked “both girls faced the wall and adopted a pose of rigid and unrelenting goodness” but for very different reasons than his, I think. Not the least of which is the fact that I’m possessed of so much unrelenting goodness myself…..
I really like a buddy story, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And what a beginning for Sparkle and Bridget. Are we going to read about more of their adventures?
You write a mean spanking story, Dev. All those details make it so real, and so squirmy. (A birch wand?! And those horrible knickers that don’t have to be yanked down and just open automatically when a girl bends over? Yikes!) I can’t believe nobody’s said it yet. The Devlin’s in the details. That’s an old joke around here, isn’t it? Thanks for a great story, Dev.
Lisa, Roman makes me chortle. I agree with him about Thor by the way.
Quel, commenting as the man you love! Tut, tut. I cannot begin to imagine what sort of girl does that sort of thing.
Thanks, Larken! I appreciate the kind words, and as far as I know my mother invented the word ‘thip,’ or it might have been her mother. In any case, it’s non-standard and onomatopoeic, and stands for the sound a fingertip makes when flicked across a thumb to land on someone’s, usually a child’s, arm to get his attention. One did not want to be thipped in anger.
No one in my family is responsible for the automatic rearview drawers, however, to the best of my knowledge anyhow. Those were standard issue during the latter 19th and first decade or so of the 20th centuries in the US.
We may see Sparkle and Bridget again sometime, but I have no particular ideas in mind for their further adventures. I’ll let them know you asked after them though.
Quel, I get the feeling this is going to be a day you’ll write a great deal about in your diary, if you keep such a thing. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
“Thip” is a great word–I noticed that one, too. I didn’t know it either, but I do now, thanks to Dev’s mother!
I WANT to read more about the adventures of Bridget and Sparkle! Those girls rule
Oh, hello everybody!
XXX
Maria
Dev, I think you’re right about someone being worried about tonight!!
And she has good reason but there’s no reply from Poppy so I guess she isn’t going to be rescued.
Good night,
Adam
Had I realised that all it takes to be rescued is a word from me I would have been doing it all along.
Release all brats.
There.
I have spoken.
Poppy is very powerful. I knew it all along.
Dev, you never cease to amaze me… Keep up the excellent work!
Dev, this got Chrossed!
Congratulations- and I am happy that more people will get the treat of reading this.
Wu-HUUUUUUU
That´s SO great!
XXX
Maria
Thanks very much, Poppy, and CJ! Hi and thanks! I didn’t see you there last night.
And thank you too, Maria!
You guys may have known, but Chross was out of action for a few days earlier in the week but apparently none the worse for the wear and tear.
Congrats on the Chross!
I see! Well, thanks again anyway, CJ.
Congrats on being Chrossed, Dev. I’m a little late but you understand, I have been a little busy these past few days.
Thanks much, bro, and I totally understand.
[...] made the quoted comment above earlier this week on Devlin O’Neill’s Weblog. It made me laugh when I read it but it also made me realize that I must not be alone when it [...]