I decided to put in a new patio, intending to do the majority of the work myself. I'm quite good with my hands. I'd cleared the required area and levelled out the soil and today I'd been concreting. I had a mixer and I'd spent half the day, with a mate helping, mixing and pouring the cement. My mate shot through once the mixing was done and I got to work levelling it out.
I did a damn fine job of it, even if I do say so myself. Once the cement dried I'd move on to tiling the area. Having done enough for the day I packed up my equipment, went inside, and had a shower and changed.
While I was changing I was standing near the window looking down at the new patio area. It looked fine to me. I caught sight of some movement in my peripheral vision and turned my head to see what had caught my eye.
It was Sandra, the kid next door, but watching her romping around I had to concede she was no longer a kid. I idly wondered how old she was. She was tossing a Frisbee for her dog, scoring a fifty percent success rate, I reckoned. She'd throw, the dog would run, jump, catch and return. She'd throw again, the dog would run, jump, miss, shrug and sit down, waiting for her to go fetch. The dog had her well trained.
Even as I watched she skimmed what should have been an easy catch, even for her mutt, but I guess a breeze must have gusted past at exactly the wrong moment. The Frisbee lifted up and away from the dog, cleared the fence by a coat of paint and sailed across my yard.
You guessed it. I cursed as I saw the Frisbee sail over and land on the newly laid cement. Fortunately it was at the edge, and any damage would be easy to fix. Accidents will happen. I was about to go down to fix the damage and toss the Frisbee back when I saw Sandra come sailing over the fence in pursuit. Quite athletic, that young woman.
I saw her stand at the edge of the new cement, looking at the Frisbee, half sunk in the cement. I was idly wondering if she'd have the nerve to tell me about the accident or just grab the Frisbee and sneak back home. She went with neither of those options, it turned out.
All Sandra had to do was walk around the cement, lean over and pick up her toy. Instead, she glanced around and, satisfied that no-one was watching, walked right across the cement, leaving deep footprints the whole way.
As soon as she took that first step I was running down the stairs, absolutely furious. When I came out the back door Sandra was standing there, looking at the cement and the footprints that led across and back again. The Frisbee had vanished. I assumed that she'd heaved it back over the fence.
She looked up as I came charging out the door, just standing there with an innocent look on her face.
"Geez, Mr D.," she said, sounding so very sincere. "Look what someone's done to your cement. I think it was one of those boys down the road. I heard them talking and jumped over the fence because I knew they were up to no good. They ran when they saw me."
Was she bloody kidding me? Did she really have the bare faced gall to think she could fob the whole thing off that easily? From the look on her face, yes, she did.
"I see," I said. "And would you happen to be able to identify them?"
"I'm sorry, but not really," she said, shaking her head sadly. "They spotted me coming and ran and I only saw the back of them."
"Well, those little bastards have caused me a bit of work," I said. "Fortunately, I've found the damage before the cement dries so I can smooth it out again quickly. Just think, if we hadn't spotted this the cement would have dried like that and I'd have had to jack-hammer part of it up again and re-lay it. Quite expensive that would have been."
Sandra quietly commiserated, pointing out that it was fortunate she'd been there and chased them off.
She stood and watched as I quickly fixed up the damage. Getting onto it so fast made it a lot easier. Finishing, I turned to Sandra.
"That's not the only damage those little bastards caused, you know," I said, noting her look of surprise.
"Ah, what else did they do?" she asked.
"Would you believe that those rotten little sods took the time to smear wet cement all over your sneakers?"
What colour is red? Sandra's face provided the answer.
"I saw the Frisbee land from my window," I said. "That was an accident and not really your fault. Walking across the cement, and back, was a deliberate act of petty vandalism."
My hand flashed out and clamped on her ear. Then I strolled over to my garden seat. I vaguely remember doing something similar when Sandra was quite a bit younger, around ten I think. She'd chucked a rock through my window and I'd caught her in the act and spanked her.
She yelped when she felt my fingers clamp down, because I wasn't too gentle about making sure I had a firm grip. Before she could get her voice going I was sitting on the garden bench and she was going across my knee.
Now all I was going to do was flick her skirt away from her bottom and deliver a firm spanking. Crime and punishment, you might say. Unfortunately for Sandra, she found her voice at exactly the wrong moment.
"Don't you dare," she said frantically. "You can't spank me. I'm an adult now. I'm sorry. Honest. I won't do it again."
"I know. You'll find some other way to make mischief. However, seeing you're an adult I guess I can take one little liberty that I couldn't with a minor."
Before she could work out what I meant I flicked up her skirt and pulled her panties down. She gave a cry of shocked protest and then a yelp of pain as my hand landed on her bottom.
I proceeded to spank her properly, taking turns at delivering nice hard slaps to each cheek, while I reiterated my points about vandalism and the potential expense if I hadn't discovered it in time. I also found time to talk about crime and punishment and how you can expect something nasty to happen when you did something you knew was wrong.
Before I was finished Sandra's bottom was very nicely flushed and smarting and she was feeling most repentant and apologetic.
Finally satisfied with what I'd wrought I swung Sandra back to her feet. Now Sandra has always been one to show her emotions, quite freely expressing her opinion about anything and everything. Right then, her bottom was smarting, and she was quite willing to let me know it.
She started jumping up and down on the spot, telling me what a rotten person I was, saying, "ow, ow, ow," a lot, and generally carrying on. I found this interesting for three reasons.
