"The Flip Technique"

What’s so hard about completing all of the assigned tasks? As much as SugarAnne gets her basketball dribbled, I have to wonder why she’s not making all of her free throws. Bear with me for a sec while I run this through my mind: First, make a written list of all the tasks needed to be completed that day. Check. This is the equivalent of preparing a lesson plan. Next, go over the list with SugarAnne task by task, point by point. Check. This is sorta like classroom study. Then, hand the list over to SugarAnne. Check. This is tantamount to pointing to the exact page in the textbook from which the questions on the test will be drawn. Finally, leave home and do the “sweat of the brow” thing. Check. Professor leaves classroom during open book exam, right?

For some reason, while I’m out in the world converting “thorns and thistles” to bread, it always breaks down. Well, to be fair, that’s hyperbole. It doesn’t always break down. It doesn’t even break down most of the time. In fact, it just breaks down in some places and only some of the time. But twice this week seems like all the time.

Tasks should be one of the easiest things about “this thing we do”. But for some reason we (that would be SugarAnne) are not getting it. All of our tasks are not done all of the time. It’s not like it’s a pop quiz that’s sprung on you in a moment’s notice. It’s essentially an open book examination that shows up highlighted, in bold and redlined on the pre-course syllabus. Please tell me that every new spanko gets a pre-course syllabus. They do don't they?

Here’s the problem methinks: when it comes to eluding punishment, Her Royal Sweetness has a quite a knack for escaping the back attack. The woman is the neo Houdinian! Take that missing person thing from the other day. She weaseled her way out of a punishment. Used the “flip technique” on me. Young HoHs beware of this maneuver. That’s where she bends over backward to blame me for her misery, or to highlight my guilt to outshine her own. It's paradoxically unintentional and yet, intentional. I quote Her Royal Sweetness (same post), “I relish the idea of knowing damned well that I deserve a spanking, and getting away with it.” Relish.

Her first effort was a double-barrel approach – misery and guilt:
“I think they heard you yelling next door. You probably ruined my friendship with Dianne” (insert the my life is over and I’ll never ever ever ever have another friend again Ihatechu! pout). I discarded her “misery” like a bent penny. But since yelling is the response of a man who has no solution (with TTWD we have a solution), personal guilt began to rise up around me like the stench of a dead rat.

She added a splash of cunning rationale. “It’s not unusual for us not to talk during the day”, said she, “If my mother hadn’t called you, you would’ve never been worried.” This is both rational and cunning. Rational enough to deflect the fact that she is supposed to have her high-tech 3 ways to be contacted mobile device on her person when she’s out. And cunning enough to point a subtle finger to the fact that I was slow to listen, quick to speak and quick to become angry. The complete opposite of what she knows I feel I should’ve been. Sincere apology successfully elicited.

Finally, a subtle lance to the neck, “It’s not fair. Nothing happens to you when you make a mistake”, and the bull’s head is forced to hang low. That’s the “flip technique”. I may not handle the “flip technique” as adeptly as I’d like to. But that will eventually change. Besides, it’s not a bad thing to err on the side of caution.

But not completing tasks leaves no room for the “flip technique”. When SugarAnne didn’t complete her tasks the first time, I slow cooked her in guilt and anticipation for a couple of hours. The second time? I dropped those panties faster than a skydiver falling under a skirt hiked up like a collapsed parachute. Whatever the approach, I ended up searing that rear until the point was clear.

When it was over all she could say was, “Why was it so har-ard?” (insert scrunched faced spanko booty rub). “Because not getting it, means gettin’ it bad. That's why.”

And that’s why it doesn’t happen all the time.