The Family Feud
Chapter Five
“Losers
make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always
keep.” —Denis Waitley
It had been only a couple days since Wendy laid down the law. It had taken the two of the Taylor Men a little while to get their heads around what was happening. Wendy had studied some of Bill's “scenarios” on the porn he took and saved on his computers, and she and Jamie had both agreed that turnabout was fair play. They wanted to see young girls prance around and work up a sweat pumping iron in the nude or jogging in place? Jumping jacks so their boobs bounced all around...they wanted them to bow and kneel.
Well, Bill and
Chris would see how it felt.
Jamie for her part in this had
been somewhat more than reluctant. This was a hassle and who wants to
see their brother and dad's johnson flapping around the house? She
had a busy social life at school of extra-curricular activities,
football games etc. She had tolerated the abnormal turn of events,
with a bemused expression on her face.
Wendy had worked it out
with her daughter, that Jamie’s role in this would be casual,
but that she should also have a little 'fun with it'. She could get
be playful with them, and at the same time get them to take care of
even doing her homework, all her chores, and whatever leg work she
wanted done.
Wendy was having a little ‘fun with it’.
She was keeping them busy exercising and cleaning up. She would
frequently walk in on them doddling and futzing around, and have to
yell at them to get them back to work.
She had seen a show on
Oprah about ‘positive affirmations’. Developing a
positive mindset is one of the most powerful life strategies there
is. Using powerful positive thinking techniques, visualizations and
positive affirmations. Thinking you will take responsibility, helps a
person to take responsibility. When she had time between her busy
work schedule and her own step-aerobics classes she would make them
stand up and admit how they were going to be less lazy, take
ownership of their mistakes, be better men.
Wendy was so busy
with her career and outside activities, she simply couldn’t be
home enough to supervise them. She needed Jamie’s help. Her
daughter was already very active in school, an honors student who was
a cheerleader in the middle of football season.
She had become a seasoned executive in part because she knew how to incentivize people, get them to do what she wanted. That could involve reverse psychology, appealing to their egos, offering them a title, but with her daughter there simply wasn’t a lot she could offer that Jamie needed.
Jamie wasn't so
sure she wanted the “brain trust” of the Taylor men
working on her homework. Wendy didn’t blame her, besides she
was already an over-achieving honor student. She wouldn’t want
to slack off, she liked to do extra credit assignments over spring
break.
Wendy upped the ante,
if she would help keep an eye on Bill and Chris and motivate them,
she would be considered technically a “Parent”. Which
meant Jamie could come go as she pleased, got her own credit card,
and would basically be treated like an adult.
Wendy felt that
was win-win, her daughter wasn't a discipline problem, and soon she'd
be away at college. There she'd have the same temptations of drinking
and boys and parties, so why not see how she handles it now while she
has a support system in place. Jamie was mature, and frankly she
needed her for this. It was a two-woman job. Her “partner in
crime” so to speak.
Jamie's final condition, was that
there were parties for popular kids (football stars, cheerleaders
etc) on Friday Nights. Her dad would buy alcohol for these parties,
and Chris and him would cart it to whoever house it was, they'd even
host one at their own home one night before homecoming.
Wendy
had always wondered what kind of parents let their teenagers throw a
full on party with alcohol in their house. Images of her stuff broken
and drunken high school seniors laying face down on her carpet
flashed through her mind. Wendy reluctantly agreed if she could find
a way to supervise it. “One party, let’s see how it
goes.”
‘How bad could
one party be? The kids are going to throw them anyway, and my lazy
son and husband can clean up the mess after; win-win’. She told
herself still nervous with the idea of kids with alcohol in her
home.
Wendy and Jamie had an agreement, a pact of sorts. They
would revisit the Taylor Women's Bill of Rights, and this time, they
would make it hurt (for the guys).
The Taylor men on the other
hand, having had a taste of life on their own, were not so excited
about the changes, to say the least. However, they found themselves
facing well-organized women who seemed to have a quick answer for
everything and who seemed to be just taking charge. Bill and Chris
were not coordinating their approach, they were just reacting. They
were two individuals in the same situation. They weren’t
sharing ideas or comparing notes. They were just trying their best to
keep up with Wendy and Jamie’s demands.
Thursday and
Friday went by in a flash. Things seemed to only escalate. Wendy
would have to come up with a rule to address some behavior or bad
habit, which in turn caused her to come up with yet another rule to
address a new bad behavior as a result of her rule. She didn’t
like to be reactive, she liked to plan and be organized. She spent
time meeting with Jamie or talking on the phone, and the two
coordinated, developed a ‘tag team’ approach to dealing
with the men.
The first Saturday of
the change for the men, set the tone for how things would be moving
forward.
It was 7 AM and Wendy woke her husband up. He was
naked on the couch. She had not slept with him since he got back. She
also had not let him put clothes on in the house since he got back.
She had however insisted he keep his ass wiped and take baths
regularly, so he didn’t stain their couch with his sweat.
She hated to have to tell him to wipe his ass. That kind of crude language offended her, but she also didn’t want him leaving stains on her couch. Scotch guard or no scotch guard, she was not going to have it on her couch. Bill should simply know better, if he was going to be naked than to leave the toilet with the job half finished.
“You’ve
got paperwork to do, before you can leave your thinking chair”
she had joked with him. She found making jokes made it easier to
accept that she had to take him in hand and organize him.
“Disarm
them...keep them without their comforts, lets dangle them just out of
their reach” She remembered telling Jamie her strategy.
“Get
your sweaty butt off my nice sofa, right now Mister...” she
shook him awake.
“Wendy...can't I just have..”
interrupted by a slap to the Bill's bare butt cheek. “Whoa
Whoa!” Bill gave a startled reply before remembering he was to
call her Ma'am. He didn’t want to hit her back, but the strike
to his ass stung. It stung more to his ego than to his butt, but it
did sting.
“Let's get in there and make us breakfast”
Wendy ignored his groggy attitude.
Chris was already in an
Apron when they went into the kitchen. His bare, pink butt peeking
out of the back.
Jamie sitting at
the table “You like the apron? It keeps in his moobs, and no
pubes get in our eggs?” she asked her mom as if she didn't even
see her Dad.
“What are Moobs?” her mom asked with
a tickled expression.
“Man boobs...they were jiggling
too much, put me off my eggs” they both laughed at Chris's
embarrassment.
“Why are you standing here, you think
this talk is for you?” Wendy turned to her husband, with a sort
of stare that seem to warn him to join his son at the kitchen counter
preparing breakfast. Bill didn't say a word. He dutifully pretended
to work, while he collected his bearings about what actually needed
to be done to make the girl’s breakfast.
She threw an
apron that said “Kiss the Cook” at her husband and said
“Not likely, you’ll get a kiss.” She giggled “but
put it on and see if this improves your odds...let's keep your short
hairs out of the breakfast...” . Wendy liked to say “Let’s”
when she really meant Bill and Chris.
He did as he was told,
but he made sure to move a little slowly about tying it in the back.
His ass was hanging out, but at least his “junk” was
covered. He had agreed to do what his wife told him because she had
him over a barrel and things just seemed to escalate from there. His
male ego told him that if he just stepped a little slowly at times,
that was his way of being defiant to the authority imposed upon him
by the girls.
There was a few a
few minutes of quiet awkwardness while the men tried to look busy
putting together a breakfast that they were ill practiced to do.
Bill cleared his throat as if to speak, but Wendy interrupted him.
“Bill is this the part of the morning like the last two where
you ask for your clothes back?”
“Well yes it is
Wendy, I mean...it's just not right. My daughter seeing me naked,
seeing Chris...its...”
“It's what? Like you seeing
her friends naked? No it's not, because as you can see neither of us
are masturbating. We aren't playing with ourselves over it.”
that silenced Bill's argument. “You see, the reason we took
your clothes, is control. We don't need to see your “manhood”,
and I use that word loosely...but if we let you keep doing what you
were doing in your loose sweat pants and grimy unwashed tank tops,
sitting around here, you'd drag asses...you actually work much faster
this way. Now unless there will be anything else, chop chop”
she said dismissively putting them back to work to finish preparing
her eggs.
When they finished serving the women in silence,
they waited standing next to them. “Good, boys....Chris you can
prepare yourself a half plate and sit down.”
If Wendy
looked up, she would have seen the confusion on Bill's face, hadn't
he done everything she was asking, why can't he sit down, he
wondered? If she pushes him a little bit further, he has just about
it had it with this twisted game, it's not going to go on any longer,
and if she does then he is....oh shit, she was talking to him and he
wasn't listening. What did she say? Think Bill..think...his mind drew
a blank.
“That is
right, you are calling us both Ma'am around here and NOT Wendy or
Jamie, you don't get familiar with your boss, you speak to them with
respect, so you will stand right there, until you say it or you don't
get to eat breakfast, which will help on your diet anyway....”
Wendy stopped to see if he was listening.
“Yes Ma'am”
he offered slowly. Half-congratulating himself on catching the last
part of her preachy tirade Every morning she had been giving him tips
on how to be a more effective husband and communicator, and better
listener. It was SOOO boring, when would she just shut up and let him
have sex again? Oh dear...oh no. While he'd been thinking to himself,
he got a woody.
“BILL!!!” exclaimed Wendy with
what may be a little overly dramatic shock.
“It's
morning wood, morning wood...it is not anything....no no, it will go
down.” He looked down helplessly at his bouncing pecker,
standing up straight under the apron.
“Bill, we talked
about this..morning wood happens right when you wake up, this is an
erection and you got it while you are standing here in front of your
daughter.”
“Gross” Jamie laughed at the
phrase ‘morning wood’ and ‘in front of your
daughter’.
“Do we allow you to walk around with
raging hard ons?”
“No”
“No,
what?”
“No....uh, oh, jeez Ma'am”
“Go stand in
the corner, keep your hands on your butt cheeks where I can see them.
I don't want you playing with it....I will check back with you in 10
minutes, if it is still up, you know what happens next?”
“Yes
Ma'am” he said turning to one of the kitchen corners, thrusting
his chest into the corner, putting his hands behind his back.
“No
playing with your butthole either, I am not sure which way you
swing..just keep the flat of your hands where we can see them, on
those hairy mancheeks.” Wendy had thought she had caught him
playing with his butt once, although he may have been scratching.
That is what he told her after she confronted him about it.
Jamie
giggled a little at her mom’s harsh instruction.
“Oh
dear, you can order your dad around too, you know. It’s quite
fun...it's good for releasing some tension. You've hardly spoken up,
been having fun with your brother's situation?” she turned her
attention back to Jamie while talking about Chris as if he was not
even in the room.
“Not really mom, it's kind of creepy.
It feels a little like something I'd see on Jerry Springer, I mean if
anyone at school found out, I even hang out with him, I'd be a social
pariah, but if they know I made him march around the living room high
stepping, and jog in place, they would never believe it? Imagine if
someone tries to write a story about this? The reader would say it's
too unlikely, what family would do this?”
“Ha-ha,
you seemed to be having fun yesterday, when you put him through an
hour of Tae Bo?”
“Oh yeah, I guess it was funny to
see him try to follow a cardio workout and dance to booty music in
front of the TV...there is that.” Jamie agreed.
“And
what about him cleaning your room, isn't he and his father starting
to learn which end to hold the mop by now that you've duct taped it
to their hands when they need to clean up?”
Jamie smiled
“Mom, you are turning into a sadist! I guess that is kind of a
funny, but a little surreal.”
Wendy smirked “What
exactly is a sadist? I thought it was someone who beats
people?”
Jamie gave a knowing smile “I thought it
was just someone who barks orders and gets off on other people's
suffering for their own amusement.”
Wendy looked a
little disappointed. “Oh dear, I am not getting off on
this...no not at all, this is tough love for Chris and Bill's
rehabilitation. Once they understand the error of their ways, and
come to their senses, and demonstrate that they will carry their
weight, and act like men, this will all be over and we can go back to
normal. “
She thought about her words and continued, “Except instead of two fat slobs, they'll be trimmer, healthier, live a lot longer. They will be taking responsibility for their shortcomings and working to improve them. Hell, no one is perfect not even us!” she laughed at that last part, even though she was serious.
Wendy finished her
thought after taking a sip of coffee “but it's alright to have
a little fun with this along the way..it shouldn't be all doom and
gloom. I mean look at your father's fat butt in the corner, isn't
that precious? Let me get the digital camera.