A "Model" Opportunity (m/f)

[OldTUGger]

It’s odd how children sometimes become masters of pretense.

Well, maybe not so odd, especially for those of us whose formative years were spent devising excuses to tie girls up. Most of them involved clever subterfuges:

“I need to practice some knots before the Boy Scout troop meeting this evening. Would you mind letting me try a few on you?” Or...

“Your best friend found out I was good with knots, and she asked me to tie her up. After I got the ropes on her, she started giggling like mad. I asked her why she was laughing, and she said she was thinking about how you would freak if you were ever tied up. Wanna prove her wrong?” Or...

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t call yourself ‘fat.’ I bet it wouldn’t take more than 15 feet of rope to tie you completely up. Fat girls take way, way more rope than that.”

Sometimes, however, deception, duplicity and guile aren’t even necessary.

A woman who lived in an apartment a few doors down from our house struck up a friendship with my mother, and she often brought her two daughters along when she visited.

The elder daughter was in her late teens, five or six years older than I was at the time, and was interested only in trading items of gossip with my mom and hers. The younger daughter, Michelle, was probably about 10 -- three years younger than I, with world-class skills at poking her freckled little nose into other people’s business.

One warm spring Saturday morning, Michelle and her elder counterparts came a-calling. Dad was at work and Mom was cleaning the house. My brothers were off playing somewhere, and I was hunkered over the desk in my bedroom, trying to put together a rather intricate model airplane.

With my two younger brothers unavailable to keep her company and the grownups talking about things that bored her to tears within seconds, Michelle came looking for me.

Yeah. Lucky me.

“What kind of airplane is that?” she asked, pointing to the front of the box the model came in.

“What does it say?”

“It says B-17. What does that mean?”

“Well, the B-17 was a World War II bomber, built by the Boeing Corporation. The nickname for it was the Flying Fortress.”

“What’s a bomber?”

“It’s an airplane that drops bombs on things that need to be blown up. Hey, I’m really trying to concentrate here; I don’t mind you watching, but you’re going to have to stop asking so many questions.”

“OK, I’ll just watch.”

I managed to get the ball turret sub-assembly’s clear plastic canopy glued on without interruption, but Michelle pounced before I even got a chance to set the darned thing down.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a ball turret. It helps to protect the underside of the plane.”

“How?”

“It has two machine guns in it, and it swivels around so the guns can be fired in just about every direction. Uh, Michelle, you’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Keeping me from concentrating on this.”

“Well, I’m curious.”

“I can tell.”

She reached across the desk and picked up one of the model’s wings. “When are you gonna put this on?”

“Not for a while yet. Hey, I need you to give that back.”

“OK,” she replied, handing the part to me.

“Thanks. Wait here a minute.”

I got up and walked to the kitchen and, as soon as I could poke a word edgewise into the swirling miasma of gossip, I issued a complaint to Michelle’s mom.

“Mrs. Smith, I’m right in the middle of working on a model airplane, and Michelle keeps breaking my train of thought by asking questions. She’s messing with the parts, too.”

“Well, Jake, you’re going to need to figure out a way to keep her from bothering you.”

“I can’t think of anything that would work, short of tying her up.”

“Well, that would certainly work.”

I’m not sure just how far my jaw dropped, but it couldn’t have stayed clear of the floor by more than a couple of inches.

“Are you serious?”

“Sure. Maybe she’ll learn a lesson.”

At this point I could probably describe how the heavens opened and angels sang. Or maybe I could use any of the myriad other clichés we dyed-in-the-clothesline TUGgers tend to cite when fate gift-wraps a tie-up opportunity for us. I won’t, though.

Suffice to say I didn’t need to be told twice.

I strolled back to the bedroom, where I found Michelle rummaging through the model’s parts, picking them up one by one and giving each a thorough examination. So engrossed was she that she hardly noticed when I walked to the closet and pulled out a canvas haversack.

“Uh, Michelle?”

“Yeah, Jake?”

“Your mom said I should tie you up.”

“Why?”

“To keep you from bothering me while I build the model.”

“You could try, but I could get loose. My brother tied me up once, and I got loose in just a few seconds.”

“OK then, turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

She bounced up from her seat and twirled around obediently. I opened the haversack and grabbed a coil of thin cotton rope.

“Cross your wrists.” I knotted a clove hitch to her left forearm just above where her wrists crossed and, as specified in the Boy Scout Handbook, applied four turns’ worth of square lashing and cinched them with two turns of frapping. I placed the final knot, another clove hitch, above the bindings and reinforced it with a pair of firm half hitches.

“Too tight?” I asked.

“Nope. I should be able to get out of this, easy.”

“Well, I’m not finished yet. Hold still.”

Another length of rope went four times around her ankles and got secured by three wraps of cinching. Yet another went around her lower legs between her kneecaps and the tops of her over-the-calf gym socks.

It began to dawn on Michelle that I might be a teeny bit better at tying people up than her brother had been.

“It’s getting hard to move my legs,” she observed.

“That’s kind of the idea, isn’t it?” I countered.

A few seconds later, I secured another band of shear lashing around her thighs, halfway between her knees and the bottoms of her pink denim shorts.

“You’re running out of rope,” she noticed.

“Ah, but I’m a Boy Scout, which means I’m always prepared.”

I reached into the closet and grabbed a pair of belts. In the late 1960s, when all this occurred, wide belts were in fashion. These were fully two inches wide, with a double row of holes punched an inch apart along their lengths.

I wrapped the first belt, a brown one, around Michelle’s shoulders and upper chest and buckled it firmly behind her back. The second one, a black one, went around her torso and upper arms just above her elbows.

At this point I half expected her to complain, but she didn’t.

“Almost finished,” I told her. “Soon we’ll see just how good an escape artist you are.”

I picked Michelle up, carried her to the middle of the room and gently lowered her face-down to the floor. I doubled a short length of rope to form a lark’s head, looped it around her ankle cinching, ran the free ends up and over her wrists and back to her ankles. Then, pulling on the free ends, I drew her sneakered little feet up so they touched her hands.

“This is called a ‘hogtie,’ Michelle. It’s the very best way to keep little girls from messing with their friends’ model airplane projects. And now there’s just one thing left to do.”

From my dresser drawer, I retrieved two Boy Scout neckerchiefs, the large triangular kind. Using the very same technique outlined in The Handbook, I folded the apex of one triangle over so it touched the far edge, and then folded the resulting band twice more to form the classic “narrow cravat” used to secure a bandage in place.

I placed the first neckerchief/cravat over Michelle’s eyes, passed the ends around to the back of her head and square-knotted them over her shoulder-length red hair.

The second cravat got an embellishment -- a fat overhand knot tied squarely at its center. “Open wide.”

“You’re not going to ga-MMMPPHHH!!”

“Yes, I am. In fact, I just did. And now I’m going work on my model some more. Good luck getting out of all this.”

I’d like to say that I got a lot more work done on that model during the time Michelle laid there, hogtied, blindfolded and gagged on the floor of my bedroom. I’d be lying if I did, though. On that fine spring morning, even the assembly of a mighty B-17 couldn’t measure up to watching a cute little red-haired girl struggle against her bonds.

She bucked. She rolled. She squirmed. Her hands twisted back and forth. Her fingers searched in vain for a knot to pick. She mmphed and grunted and growled. The harder she fought, the redder her face grew and the more frazzled her hair became.

Eventually she gave up. She rolled onto her stomach and laid there, quietly, for several minutes until her mom strolled in.

“Well, Jake, I see you found a way to keep her out of your hair,” Mrs. Smith remarked, seemingly unfazed at the sight of her tightly packaged offspring. “But I do think it’s time you set her free. We need to head home.”

I released Michelle’s hogtie rope first, and she groaned with relief as she straightened her pinioned legs. The blindfold and gag came off next, followed by the belts, wrist ropes, the leg ropes and, finally, the ankle ropes.

“Well, Michelle, are you going to bother Jake any more while he’s working on something?” her mother asked.

“Heck, yeah! That was fun!!!!!”

[MaxRoper]

You were certainly a rope prodigy at a very young age. Fun story. Thanks for posting.

[ZetaRESP]

Good story and great telling... and she bothered you again next time, didn't she?

[Fordman]

I can’t tell you how much I love this story, it brings back a fond memory.

Years ago (actually decades now) I owned a bakery / ice cream parlor, and one of my counter girls, Stephanie, couldn’t keep her hands off a wedding cake we were working on.

After the third warning I grabbed a scarf the women would wear on their heads, just as a joking threat, and she immediately turned her back and put her wrists together. What choice did I have? While tying her hands I commented on her enthusiastic reaction.

Stephanie: “My mom thought of this a long time ago.”

For the next 10 minutes she’s in front telling customers she’s tied up right now, then my manager Sonya came into the kitchen to get something.

Me: “Can someone untie her so she can do some work?”

Sonya: “I tried.”

I hope whoever married Michelle and Stephanie appreciates the gift they received.

[OldTUGger]

For the next 10 minutes she’s in front telling customers she’s tied up right now, then my manager Sonya came into the kitchen to get something.

Me: “Can someone untie her so she can do some work?”

Sonya: “I tried.”

Love it!!!

[Canuck100]

Great story! Hope she came back for more of the same treatment...

[Cleavegagger]

Lovely storie, makes you wish girls we're even more annoying to give you a reason