torn hose: a mother's story

Humiliation, Shame, And Avoiding Ladders

It was a quarter till one when Raymond walked up the driveway, home after the last day of school. A half day that consisted of a goodbye assembly, distributing final report cards, and cleaning out lockers.

When I heard the front door open, I shouted out to him, "Raymond, before you do anything I want you to come back here!"

"Okay mom, just let me take my stuff upstairs first, then I'll come down."

"NO!" I quickly shouted, "Come here now!"

"I just wanna . . . "

"NOW!"

Fine, okay," he responded with a grunt, as we heard him drop his things on the floor.

Raymond entered the room with a look of annoyance on his face. Rachel was sitting beside me, both of us with a serious look on our faces as we watched him stop just inside the doorway.

He looked at the TV, which was off, then back at us.

"What," he asked.

That's when something caught his eye on the coffee table between us. Immediately his cheeks turned red and his gaze diverted away. He had instantly recognized the two thongs and three pairs of hose balled up on the table as the ones from under his mattress.

At that moment he knew he had been found out and the color drained from his face as he began to visibly shake.

I instructed him to sit down in the chair. He sat with his body turned towards the television. I ordered him to turn facing Rachel and myself.

"Is there anything you wish to say to us, Raymond," I sternly asked. "You wanna explain this?"

He gave us an 'I don't know what you're talking about' look and shrugged his shoulders.

"Are you sure," I asked.

He said nothing.

"You can't explain this away, so you may as well come clean now, and tell me just how Rachel's hose got this worn out, trashed without her even wearing them, and ended up underneath your mattress, or it can get even more awkward in here real quick."

Still, he didn't respond.

"How about you start by telling us why you took them in the first place?"

Still, nothing but silence and no eye contact.

"Okay then, if that's how you want to play it. Rachel, please turn the television on for me and cast my phone to the screen."

"Sure mom," she replied.

She clicked the TV on with the remote, then pressed smart view on my phone.

Onve my phone was showing on the TV she pressed play on a video of him from that first day we went shopping and Rachel and I could not tear ourselves away from the expressions on Raymond's face. His emotions ranged from shock to anger to embarrassment and shame whilst his face grew redder and redder.

When the video had finished, she played another and I began asking questions without pausing to wait for an answer. I had a million questions running around in my head and I wanted to ask them all.

"Well, my boy or should I say girl? What's going on in these videos? What's the meaning of this? Does this mean you want to be a girl? Are you being bullied at school to the point you think life would be easier if you were a girl? Or is this the only way you can get aroused enough to rub one out? I wonder, could this have to do with you being around constant female influences and not having a male role model in your life? Are you gay? Do you just like the feeling of dressing like this because it excites you sexually? You're doing it too often for it to just be a curiosity, there's more to it than that, so what's the whole story?"

When I paused, he responded, but all he could do was mumble something about being sorry and how he was an embarrassment and a disappointment.

Rachel looked him straight in the eyes and said, "If you wanted to dress in our clothes you should have at least asked us, then we could have washed them before we wore them again, or I could have given you some things I don't wear anymore. Sneaking around and taking our things, especially our most intimate clothing items, and destroying them, I might add, was just plain wrong. You've made us both so mad."

We got several more nervous sorry's out of him, but that was it. He was caught, backed into a corner and I could tell he just did not know what to do or say, so I intervened.

"Rachel and I have thought about and discussed it for quite a while now, and we have come to a conclusion. For all that you have been doing, for all the clothes you have worn both Rachel's and mine, especially for the ones you destroyed, you are going to have to be severely punished."

His face again went white as the stormtroopers on the sheets that used to be on his bed.

I continued, "For all the hose you've destroyed, you're going to learn how to handle them and how to put them on properly so that you don't ladder or tear them."

His head dropped and I saw a tear trickle from one of his eyes.

"What do you have to say?"

He shook his head and said nothing.

"So do you think that's fair?"

He began to sob.

"Yes ma'am, I guess," he almost inaudibly mumbled with a slight nod of his head.