Reasons to Avoid Punishment

An Excerpt

"What do you have to say for yourself, young man?" Assistant Principal McDowell asked me. He stared at me intently, as if the fate of the world would be decided by how I answered him.

We were in his office, and I was in trouble. No surprise there. But whatever punishment Old Man McDowell came up with wouldn't be half as bad as what awaited me at home.

"Billy said that Addison is a girl's name. He didn't believe me when I told him that it means 'Son of Adam' so I threw the ball at him." I looked at the floor. I knew better than to throw the first punch, or in this case, the ball. It had hit Billy between the eyes, and blackened his right eye. Not that I was exactly sorry for what I had done. Maybe now he'd keep his mouth shut.

"That reasoning doesn't fly, you know that," Mr. McDowell said. He sighed and shook his head, steeping his fingers. "Wait out in the office, I'm going to call your mother and have her come pick you up. I'm not suspending you, just sending you home for the day. This had better not happen again, Understood, Mr. Young?"

"Yes, sir," I replied nodding as I stood. I went out into the main office and sat on one of the benches. I wasn't sure where the school had gotten them, but just sitting on one should've been considered a punishment in itself. I squirmed as I sat there, but nothing could make these things comfortable. As I sat there, my mind drifted to the day that mom had taken me to the mall to buy it.

* * *

It was a few weeks before school started and Mom and decided it was time for us to go clothes shopping. I had tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't have any of it. I had to have been the only middle school student who still had to go clothes shopping with his mommy.

Somehow we had ended up in the teen girl's area and Mom was looking through a rack of dresses.

"Why are you buying a dress in my size?" I asked.

"To help keep you in line," Mom had replied matter-of-factly. She held a light pink dress up to me, pursed her lips, put it back on the rack and pulled out a slightly larger size, repeating the process until she found one that she liked. "It worked with your uncle... He raised all sorts of hell when we were growing up, until mom put him in a dress. One time was enough to straighten him out." Mom had a smile on her face, as she recalled the event.

"Uncle Walt was punished by putting him in a dress?" I asked. Was she serious? And was she planning on doing this to me? I groaned. Why couldn't I have a normal parent whose idea of punishment was taking away my cell phone?

"Yes." Mom placed a pair of white tights in the buggy on top of the dress. Mom started walking to the shoes, where she selected a pair of pink shoes with a low heel and put them in the buggy. "With this hanging in your closet, where you'll see it almost every day, you'll probably stay out of trouble. If you don't, you can expect to be wearing it."

For some reason, I was both intrigued and scared by the thought of this dress. For the most part, I was annoyed with having to have a dress in my closet. I mean, what if one of my friends was over and saw it? God, I'd be laughed out of school. But part of me couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to wear it.