17 - Challenging Mum
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By Gillian B
Wed Aug 11 21:39:09 UTC+0100 1999
This story dates from about 1967, when I was 13 and my brother Bob was 12.
One afternoon I returned home from visiting friends. I came in through the back door as usual, and as I entered the kitchen I was surprised (to say the least) to find Bob securely tied to a chair while our Mum busied herself preparing food. I asked Bob if he was all right. He didn't reply (mainly because he was gagged) but nodded towards Mum. My curiosity was (not unreasonably) aroused and I asked her what was going on. "Just a little wager, dear." was the reply. Mum glanced at the clock and added, "It's about time to untie him now. Would you do it for me?"
I examined Bob from all angles. He was well tied up. He was sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair. His wrists were crossed and tied behind the chair back, using a short winter scarf. His ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair with long socks. Another pair of socks tied his legs back to the chair legs just below his knees. Two long winter scarves had been tied tightly round him and the chair back. Finally, he was gagged with a yellow cotton duster. (We usually used winter scarves and socks for tie-up games when we were kids.)
While I untied Bob, I asked him in a whisper what was going on. He explained that he had been telling our Mum about some of the tie-up games we kids had been playing lately. He had foolishly gone on to bet her that he could tie her up so she couldn't escape. Mum had accepted the challenge. It seemed that he had given her an hour to escape, confident that she couldn't, but she had freed herself within about ten minutes. The conditions of the game were that if Mum escaped, then she could set Bob an escape challenge. Bob's hour had just ended when I came in and he appeared to have made no progress whatever.
Bob and I decided that the honour of the younger generation was at stake here. I regarded myself as the Houdini of the family, so I started an intensive course of training for Bob. Every evening after school, I set him increasingly difficult escape challenges. With practice, he could untie his own wrists about eight times out of ten and in some positions could do it every time. So far, so good.
About a week after the first challenge, Bob issued another escape challenge to Mum. She again accepted, but stipulated that Bob had to earn the right to tie her up by escaping himself first. We were expecting this, hence the training.
I watched with the air of an anxious sports coach as Mum tied Bob to a chair in the kitchen again. I was surprised by the order she did the tying. She started by tying his legs to the chair legs at ankle and just below knee level using two pairs of long socks. Next, she had him raise his arms while she tied his body to the chair back using two long scarves, one round his waist and the other from the top of the chair back, over both shoulders, crossing on his chest and tied off to the sides of the chair. Next, she tied a slip knot in one end of each of a pair of woollen winter stockings. She handed Bob a pair of gloves to protect his wrists then she put the slip knots over Bobs hands and pulled them tight. The other ends of the stockings were tied off to the rails joining the chair legs at the sides. Bob's arms were thus pointing straight down on either side of the chair and he had no way of reaching any knots. Mum finished the process off by cleave gagging Bob with a duster as before.
So much for training - I had not prepared Bob for this and I didn't think he stood any chance of escaping. Mum had seen some of our training sessions and had neatly outmanoeuvred us. In my role as worried sports coach, I invoked the unscrupulous loser's final weapon - I decided to cheat! I reasoned that if Bob could wriggle one hand free, everything else would follow and he could release himself. I decided to help a bit.
While Mum was out of the room I knelt down beside Bob's chair to inject a little inconspicuous slack into one wrist binding. I planned to loosen off the knot at the lower end where it went round one of the chair rails and to transfer the slack to the slip knot round his wrist. Bob would be able to take it from there himself.
I strongly suspect that Mum had anticipated my move. I had hardly started, when I became aware of her standing over me. I backed off and she re-tightened Bob's wrist binding. Mum turned to me with a grin. "I think we'd better keep you from interfering, young lady," she said with mock severity. I raised my hands in surrender.
Mum fetched another chair and put it alongside Bob's then disappeared to fetch something to tie me to it. I meekly sat down on the chair, furiously trying to think of anything constructive to do. When Mum returned, she handed me a pair of socks and a pair of mittens to protect my ankles and wrists from chafing. I put them on still trying to come up with any kind of idea. The inevitable tying up followed the same order as with Bob - ankles and knees to the chair legs with socks and two long scarves to tie my body to the chair back. As she had with Bob, she put slip knots in a pair of woollen stockings and put the slip knots over my hands.
I realised that if she tied my hands like Bob's, I would end up with my hands at about the same level as his, so all I would have to do would be to shuffle my chair close to his and one of us could free the other. My face must have given away my relief at this thought, because Mum gave me a big grin before crossing my arms into a sort of straightjacket position. She tied the ends of the stockings to the sides of the chair back. Finally, she pushed a damp hanky into my mouth and tied a scarf over my mouth and nose.
Mum set an alarm clock for an hour hence and put it where we could see it, kissed each of us on top of the head and went to resume her chores.
Had the ends of the stockings on my wrists been tied together behind my back or even tied to the middle of the chair back, I could have escaped - that would be a Kellar tie and I knew how to get out of that. As it was, I didn't have enough freedom of movement in my arms to do anything useful.
More as a matter of principle than with any real hope, I shuffled my chair over to Bob's. It was exhausting work and took a long time. I couldn't reach any of Bob's bindings. With some careful manoeuvring, Bob could reach the socks securing my knees, so he untied those. I could flap my knees from side to side after that, but it didn't make any real difference.
Long before the alarm clock went off, we had given up trying to escape and were stoically waiting out the time. Shortly before our hour was up, Mum busied herself over the kitchen stove. When the alarm had rung, Mum untied us and we were able to rise (slightly stiffly) and go over to the kitchen table to revive ourselves with the tea and toast that she had prepared for us.
In our post-mortem discussion, Bob and I said it was unfair of Mum to tie us up so we had no chance of escape. Mum quite reasonably pointed out that "fairness" in a tie-up competition was about equality of opportunity to escape but that how well the tying up was done was the essence of the competition. She had therefore won because she was better at it than we were. We couldn't dispute the logic, but nevertheless felt hard done by.
As we were obviously disgruntled by the outcome, Mum offered to give us another contest another day and she would let us tie her up first. We brightened at this suggestion and agreed to it - this might yet be a chance to recover our lost honour.
Bob and I resumed our training programme. This time, we were looking for a tie-up which we could apply effectively and which we were sure that I couldn't escape from. We already knew that I was a better escaper than Bob and the logic was based on the assumption that I was also better than Mum, so anything I couldn't get out of, she wouldn't be able to get out of either.
The agreed time for the challenge was one afternoon after school. While Bob and I moved the chair we had selected for the challenge into the kitchen (we had a huge kitchen and it was very much the family room) together with the pile of scarves and socks we planned to use, Mum went upstairs to put a pair of trousers on. When she came back I realised that she too had been putting in some serious thought and had dressed carefully for escaping - she was wearing a thin roll-neck sweater tucked into a pair of stretchy stirrup-pants. She had pulled a pair of socks up over the ends of the pants and was wearing a pair of cotton gloves pulled up over the cuffs of her sweater.
The chair we had chosen was a straight backed wooden dining chair with arms. We started by tying a long scarf around Mum's waist and the chair back. We tied her wrists down to the chair arms with a pair of woollen stockings and also tied her forearms down just below elbow level with another pair. A second long scarf went round her and the chair back just above her elbows, holding her arms to her sides and her body back into the chair. We used long socks to tie Mum's ankles back to the chair legs and short scarves to tie her knees down to the corners of the chair seat. Finally, we gagged her with a damp hanky in her mouth held in place with a scarf tied tightly over her mouth and nose. All the time, I had the uneasy feeling that Mum was in some way one jump ahead of us.
We set an alarm clock to go off in an hour and settled down to watch Mum's (surely futile) escape attempt. Mum methodically tested all her bindings to see exactly how much freedom of movement was available. We were unprepared for the speed of what followed. Mum grasped the arms of the chair we had tied her to and pushed herself as far back and up as possible, probably raising her bottom 3 or 4 inches (8 to 10cm) off the seat. She then wriggled to work the scarf round her arms and body and the chair-back upwards. With a little perseverance, it came off the top of the chair and went slack. She was then able to lean forward, bringing her mouth close to one hand. She pulled the gag out of her mouth then untied one wrist with her teeth. Within another two or three minutes, she had untied herself completely.
Two things dawned on me. Firstly, Mum was taller than me (and still is) and a much more slender build, so my not being able to escape was no guarantee that she couldn't. Secondly, I realised why she tied our bodies more firmly to the chair than we had hers - she had thought of this line of attack already.
While our comprehensive defeat was still sinking in Mum announced the return match and asked who would go first. As I felt largely responsible for letting the side down, I volunteered. Mum said that as we had put so much work into her fate, she had put some thought and preparation into ours. I didn't like the sound of that. I was wearing a dress, so I told Mum I had better go and get trousers on. Before I went, Mum's parting comment was, "Don't bother with a jumper." Puzzled, I went on my way. I put on jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and put my hair into a plait.
On my return to the kitchen, Bob was watching apprehensively as Mum sorted out a pile of tying-up material she had selected for me. The reason for not needing a jumper became immediately obvious - the first item was a cardigan belonging to Mum. It was quite a thick Aran knit cardigan with big leather-covered buttons and a high collar. Mum put the cardigan on me backwards so the buttons were at the back. As she buttoned it up, I discovered that it was quite a snug fit (Mum being thinner than me) but the sleeves came right down over my hands. Mum tied a scarf tightly round my waist then crossed my arms and knotted the sleeves behind my back as a sort of improvised straitjacket. I didn't mind - I knew (at least in principle) how to get out of a straitjacket and expected a stretchy cardigan to be an easy escape. I was less sanguine after the next move. She looped a winter scarf over my arms where they crossed in front of me, took the ends down, between my legs and up behind my back, tying them to the sleeves knotted behind my back. Next, she tied my ankles with a short scarf and my knees with a slightly longer one. This all felt alarmingly secure so far and I was rather dreading the gag that would surely follow. As it turned out, the gag was the kind she had used before with a wet hanky in my mouth and a scarf tied tightly over my mouth and nose. She finished off by putting an old balaclava helmet belonging to Bob over my head. It was quite a tight fit, coming up over my chin and right down to my eyebrows - there would be no scope for rubbing the gag off against anything. I was still standing at this stage, so Mum carefully lowered me to the floor then stood back to admire her work.
Bob's fate was much the same as mine. Instead of a cardigan, Mum used a heavy sweater belonging to our father. She cleave gagged Bob with a long sock, again using a hanky for packing, but didn't bother with a balaclava.
Once she had Bob as thoroughly trussed up as me, she set the alarm clock and announced that she thought we might just have time to escape, If we thought quickly and didn't waste time. That information alone was a valuable clue - our bondage was presumably designed to be escapable. Bob and I both wriggled - fruitlessly - for 5 minutes or so. I decided at that point that brains not brawn were what I needed, so I settled down to think, while Bob carried on wriggling.
On consideration, I realised that Bob's mouth, although cleave gagged, was the only part of either of us which could be used for manipulation and was not also covered up. I decided that the first move had to be getting our gags off. I squirmed over to Bob and nuzzled his face with mine for some time before the penny dropped and he tried to grasp the top edge of my gag in his teeth. My balaclava stopped the gag from going much below my nose, so Bob turned his attention to getting that off. It was a tight fit and it took some effort to remove it (and a certain amount of violence to my ears). Once it was off, Bob was able to pull my gag down below my chin and I spat out the packing. 15 minutes gone.
Bob's gag was more problematic - it was too tight to pull down, so I had to untie it. This is not easy with teeth as your nose gets in the way. I also banged my forehead on the back of Bob's head several times before I got the gag untied. 25 minutes gone.
Now we could both speak, we had a quick conference. We decided to concentrate on getting me free as we thought I would have a better chance with the "straitjacket". We worked out a strategy and the first bit fell to Bob to do. I put my feet near his head and he set to work to untie my ankles using his teeth. Once he had done that he got my knees free. 35 minutes gone.
It was down to me now. I lay on my front and tried to get one foot up behind my bottom to where the scarf went between my legs. I struggled for some time before realising it was futile. I turned on my back and tried again. This worked better as I was able to use my weight to keep my foot in contact with my bottom. After several tries, I hooked my toes through the scarf and was able to wriggle my leg through the loop. 40 minutes gone.
There was nothing holding the sleeves down either in front or behind, so I just had a routine straitjacket escape on my hands. It was nevertheless hard work as the sleeves were knotted quite tightly - I needed to roll on one side and get some pressure on the lower elbow to get the sleeve to come up over the other elbow. Finally I got the sleeves right up behind me and could flip the knot over my head so the sleeves were in front of me (but still knotted). 45 minutes gone.
I reached behind my head and I could get the top button of the cardigan undone working through the thickness of the sleeves still covering my hands. I couldn't reach any of the other buttons. I tried just working the cardigan up over my head, but the scarf round my waist prevented that and it was knotted behind my back, so I couldn't untie it. I had to get the cardigan sleeves unknotted. I settled down to some hard work with my teeth and eventually got the knot untied, so I could use my hands. 55 minutes gone.
I turned to Bob and freed him from his sweater straitjacket as quickly as I could. I left him to untie his own legs as I untied the scarf around my waist and wriggled out of the cardigan. We finished, hot, sweaty and exhausted, with only about a minute to spare.
Mum congratulated us on our efforts and rewarded us with that most English of rewards, tea and toast. We concluded that the score was about even and honour had been satisfied all round. But Bob and I still harboured an ambition to get Mum in a tie-up she couldn't get out of. What we did will have to wait for another posting.
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Gillian B's stories
- 01 - Jill's Revenge (fF/mm)
- 02 - Murder at the Vicarage (ff/f, f/F, f/ff)
- 03 - Gillian's Birthday Present (*/mf)
- 04 - Peter and Paul (mm/F, F/mm)
- 05 - Tying Myself up in Knots (f/self)
- 06 - The Magic Show (f/f)
- 07 - Tying Myself up in Knots (Again) (f/self)
- 08 - Trouble with Tim (f/m, f/self, m/f)
- 09 - The Great Biscuit Robbery (mf/F, F/mf)
- 10 - The Lamp Post (m+f+/f+)
- 11 - Teacher Torture (or: Ol’ Soggy) (ff/FF)
- 12 - Anna's Story (ff/f, F/ff)
- 13 - A Game of Soldiers (mm/f, Ff/mm)
- 14 - A Good Old Fashioned English Hanging (f)
- 15 - Kidnapping Cathy (f/m, m/ff, ff/m, f/f)
- 16 - A Surprise Party (fff/f)
- 17 - Challenging Mum (F/mf, mf/F)
- 18 - Getting Tied Up in my Studies (f/f, ff/F)
- 19 - Money for Old Rope (M/F)
Index of all stories in the "Archive for Everyone" section