Maggi’s
Tales – Part 2: Take Three Daughters
My three
daughters occasionally went through periods where their game of choice involved
tying each other up. I never either encouraged or discouraged this; in my view,
it was just one of those things kids do. My participation in these games was
limited. I occasional had to rescue one or more tied up offspring when games
had gone wrong or got a little out of hand. I also responded to the occasional
requests to tie all three of them up at once, usually so they could all pretend
to have been kidnapped or to have been robbery victims.
While I never
forbade the kids to tie each other up, I did insist on some basic rules. These
were that nobody should be tied up if they were unwilling, that nobody should
be bullied and that reasonable care should be taken to prevent injury. After
some nasty abrasions with hairy sisal string, I encouraged them to use softer
materials like scarves and socks. This also had the advantage that it made
escaping easier, so the games were more evenly balanced between captor and
captive.
In retrospect,
it is odd that for a long time, none of these games involved me as victim.
Looking back, I think the girls really just regarded their games as being their
business and nothing to do with grown-ups. The were happy to accept my
occasional services as rescuer or tier-upper, but that was about it.
The incident I
want to relate happened way back in late 1981. My two older twin girls, Amber
and Saffron, were 12. (My only excuse for their names is that they were born in
1969. They should just consider themselves lucky that they didn't end up as
Moonbeam and Rainbow.) Their younger sister, Ottilie was 9.
At the time, I
was a mature student studying graphic design at art college. I had worked from
1958, when I was 16, until 1979 as a printer, staring off as an apprentice and
ending up as a partner in the business. By the late 70s, it was already obvious
that computers were on the way and the days of traditional printing were
severely numbered, so rather than buying out my partner's share of the business
when he reached retirement age, we both sold up. He got enough money to retire
and I got enough to put myself through college.
Juggling
studying with being a mum was never easy. This was particularly the case when I
had project work to finish off at home. The house could be very noisy with
three demanding kids running around when I was trying to work. I vividly
remember the piece I was working on at that time. My then-current project was
to design display material for a museum exhibition and I had come up with
something that looked like a Victorian steel-engraved drawing, with a huge
amount of detail all drawn with a fine pen. It was progressing well until the
kids came home from school mid-afternoon, then it became very hard to
concentrate. While I was working at the kitchen table, they were ostensibly
watching TV together in the lounge, but actually seemed to be running everywhere
in the house and screaming.
I went to try
to restore some order. The girls were all sitting in front of the TV at this
point, but making as much noise as they would at a football match. "Do I
have to tie you lot up to get some peace around here?" I demanded.
Ottilie, always
the cheekiest of the three, instantly responded, "Yes, please."
A heartbeat
later, the twins chorused, "Yes, please," as well.
I had intended
the question to be a piece of mother's rhetoric, but given their reaction, it
occurred to me that this might be an opportunity to distract the kids with a
game and also give myself a chance to finish my work before my husband came
home. I sent the kids off to use the bathroom and gathered up something to
secure them with. Tying the three of them up in the way I usually did would not
keep them occupied for long, but I hatched an Evil Plan while I was getting
ready for them.
The three girls
were not surprised at the pile of socks I had ready for them when they returned
to the lounge. However, rather than the long socks that usually did duty as
binding materials, I had chosen the thickest ones I could find. They were
rather taken aback when I instructed them each to put a pair on their feet and
another pair over their hands. The twins were wearing jeans and I told them to
tuck the ends of their trousers into the socks too.
Puzzled, the
girls did as they were told and then I produced my Secret Weapon, a ball of
bright green polypropylene garden twine. I started with Amber. First, I made
sure that the socks over her hands were pulled well up over the sleeves of her
sweater, then I tied her wrists behind her back. With her hands palm-to-palm, I
put about a dozen turns of twine around her wrists, not too tightly, then
cinched them together with maybe five or six turns between her wrists and
knotted it off. I made sure that the binding was not too tight but that she
couldn't slip her hands out. The knot was minute. With care, you could probably
have teased it open with the point of a pair of scissors, but there was no way
that it could be untied with sock-covered hands. I cut off the loose ends of
the string leaving ends maybe a centimetre long.
I tied Amber's
ankles in exactly the same way, then repeated the process on Saffron.
Ottilie
required special care in tying. Her hands were very small, even for her age,
and I knew that she was quite adept at escaping the worst that her sisters
could do. I didn't want to risk injuring her by over-tightening her wrist
binding so it took some very careful adjustment to get it right. Also, if
Ottilie escaped, I would have to face her wrath; she objected strongly to
anyone making concessions towards her as the youngest of the three. Ottilie
always preferred skirts to trousers and was wearing a pinafore dress over a
sweater and thick woollen tights. I tidied up the socks she had put on over her
tights and tied her ankles just as I had her sisters'.
"Can we
tie you up if we escape?" Ottilie asked.
I replied with
a non-committal, "Well, maybe," and told her that I didn't think
there was much risk of any of them getting free. (I don't really remember all
the dialogue verbatim after all these years, but the story is easier to relate
if I pretend that I do.)
I had gags
ready for all three of them but told them that if they were quiet, I wouldn't
use them. That said, I left them to watch TV and went back to my drawing board.
It didn't take
long for the noise to build up again. None of the three seemed to be in the
least bit bothered by being tied up; it was just the amicable squabbling that
makes up so much of children's conversation.
I went back to
the lounge. They weren't getting a second chance, so I gagged all three of them
without further ado. I used cotton headscarves on the twins and a rather
smaller cotton bandanna on Ottilie. In each case, I folded the scarf into a
band, put it between their teeth and knotted it behind their head. I made sure
the gags were tight enough that they would stay in place but not tight enough
to hurt and that the knots were too tight to be undone by sock-covered fingers.
There was no
packing behind the gags, so the girls could still just about talk, even though
their voices were reduced to a barely intelligible mumble.
With peace
restored, I was able to focus on my work and pretty soon, I was on a roll, and
completed my drawing within the time I had allotted myself. I was packing my
finished drawing away in my portfolio and everything else in my art materials
bag when, to my astonishment, all three girls trooped into the kitchen.
I asked the
girls how they had got free. Saffron replied by brandishing a pair of scissors.
They were the ones I had used to cut the string to length while I was tying
them up. I was actually very impressed that they had not only managed to
retrieve the scissors from the fairly tall piece of furniture where I had left
them but that one of them had then been able to use them working with her hands
covered by socks and bound behind her back.
"You said
we could tie you up if we escape," Ottilie announced.
I reminded them
that I all had said was, "Maybe." However, given that they had stayed
quiet and let me work even after they had freed themselves, I was prepared to
make a concession and agreed to let them tie me up.
I took a
precautionary trip to the bathroom and when I returned the girls were ready for
me. They had moved the kitchen chair I had been sitting on out into the middle
of the floor, Amber had the ball of green twine in her hands, Saffron still had
the scissors and Ottilie was clutching two pairs of socks.
My dress sense
rather reflected my status as an art student and my formative years in the 60s.
I have been described as an ageing hippie from time to time, probably with some
justification. I still remember what I was wearing that day. I had on a long,
flowing wrap-around Indian print cotton skirt. As it was winter and I live in
Scotland, I had a pair of warm woollen tights on under that and a pair of
stoutly knitted socks. I don't like to have my arms encumbered when I am
drawing, so I had a sleeveless turtle-neck sweater on the top half. This is
probably my version of 1960s California adapted for the rigours of a northern
European climate!
I already had
socks on my feet, so I declined one of the pairs Ottilie offered me and pulled
the other pair over my hands. I offered my hands behind me for tying, but
Ottilie insisted that I should put on the cardigan I had draped over the back
of the chair. She helped me put it on and pulled the socks up over the
cardigan's sleeves.
Amber asked me
to sit down on the chair, so I did so and put my hands behind the chair back.
Saffron and Amber debated the correct length of twine to use and then cut off a
piece about twelve feet long. They wrapped the twine around my wrists as I had
done with theirs and cinched it between them. It all felt very competently
done. Whatever else you can say about my girls, they are a quick study for
physical skills.
Saffron snipped
off the spare string and she and Amber turned their attention to my ankles. I
surreptitiously tested the security of my wrist binding while they were not
looking. There was no way I could pull my hands out of the binding, but it was
not too tight to stop my wrists from turning inside the loops of twine; the
tightness was exactly right. By twisting one hand up towards my wrist, I could
just feel the twine and the tiny knob of the knot through the thickness of the
sock with the tip of my middle finger. The socks were up over my elbows and on
top of a woollen cardigan, so there would be far too much friction to have any
chance of working them off my hands. In short, I was stuck and I knew it.
I wiggled my
feet once Amber and Saffron were happy with my ankle binding. It too seemed to
be completely secure. I definitely wasn't going anywhere until the girls said
so, unless I could get to one of the kitchen knives.
While Amber and
Saffron had been seeing to my binding, Ottilie had been busy too. I had been
watching her as she selected a clean dish towel from the kitchen drawer where
they were kept. She had laid it out on one of the counters and carefully folded
it diagonally then formed it into a band about two inches wide. She now brought
it across to me. It seemed that I was not going to have any option about being
gagged. I decided not to quibble and opened my mouth while Ottilie carefully
seated the gag between my teeth. I had my hair back in a long braid while I was
working to keep it out of my way (it was almost waist-length in those days).
Amber lifted it up while Ottilie knotted the ends of the dish towel behind my
head. I caught the gag between my teeth to prevent it being drawn too deeply
into my mouth.
I mumbled
something almost unintelligible at the girls, who correctly interpreted it as,
"I don't think I can get out of this."
I was
confronted by three evil grins. "We haven't finished yet," Saffron
told me.
Amber pulled a
short length off the ball of twine and tied it to the top rail of the chair
back. She then brought the ball forward over my shoulder, paying out twine as
she went, and took it diagonally across my body. Keeping the twine taut, Amber
passed the ball around one of the chair legs and then reached underneath the
chair seat to hand it to Saffron, who was at the other side. Saffron spiralled
the twine around my arms and body and the woodwork of the chair until she
reached the top of the chair back, where she wound it around one of the
decorative knobs at the top of the side members. Ottilie took over and
spiralled the twine back down my body again until she reached the chair seat
once more. It was Ambers turn again and she wound the twine around a chair leg
before taking it over my lap and handing it to Saffron who took it under the
chair and handed it back to Amber. Between them, the twins pinned my thighs
down to the chair seat quite efficiently. Ottilie saw to a spiral of string
down the lower part of my legs to my ankles and back up again. Saffon snipped
the string off and tied the end to the top of one of the front legs of the
chair.
All three girls
seemed to be waiting for me to react, so I struggled as hard as I could against
my bonds. I could still move my head and I could still kick as my ankles were
bound but not tied to the chair. I was nevertheless most definitely and quite
comprehensively stuck.
Being tied up
wasn't a completely novel experience. There had been a number of occasions when
I was a child. Most of these had been part of games of cowboys and Indians or
cops and robbers or something of that kind. As I recall those, the tying
involved was fairly incompetent and we all just obeyed a tacit rule that if you
were tied up, you pretended that you really couldn't escape. Later on, when I
joined the Girl Guides, I found out about being tied up rather more
effectively.
Having tied me
up, the girls got on with doing their own thing and just left me trussed up in
the kitchen. I guess it was fair as that was more-or-less what I had done to
them. However, there were three of them and they could at share the experience
and chat together, or at least mumble; I was on my own and getting rather
bored.
Once the time
got towards half past six, my daughters became noticeably more excited and
stayed in the kitchen, whispering to each other in a little huddle. It was easy
to guess why; that was the time their father usually got home. Most traffic in
the house went via the back door and the kitchen, so my husband Alan's first
sight on returning home was me tied to a chair with a web of green string and
his three giggling daughters.
Alan was quite
impressed. He spent what seemed like an inordinate length of time examining my
predicament from all angles before planting a kiss on the top of my head and
suggesting to the girls that it might be time to cut their mother loose. I
nodded vigorous agreement.
While Alan went
upstairs to change out of his business clothes, Saffron, who seemed to be
custodian of the scissors, set to work to snip away my bindings.
We enjoyed a
group hug once I was free and the girls were nice enough to thank me for being
such a good sport. I asked them if they had enjoyed being tied up too and they
all assured me that they had.
It was entirely
unintentional, but I set several precedents that afternoon, which had
repercussions at a later date. However, those are other stories.
Return to the Contributions index