Dad's Hot Seat

“I can’t believe he’s late again,” Beth Conrad muttered to herself angrily as she drummed her manicured fingernails on the steering wheel. She glanced impatiently at her watch, seeing that it was already 5:10 pm, they were certainly going to be late as it was and if he didn’t hurry they were going to miss the store closing!

“Is Grandpa running late again, Mom?” her daughter asked from the back seat.

“I’m afraid so,” Beth said with a sigh. All of a sudden she honked the horn, giving it a loud and long blast that came so suddenly it even startled her daughter Amy!

“Come on, Dad!” she yelled out the window. “We’re going to be too late if you don’t hurry!”

A few moments later, the front door opened and a tall, distinguished looking man came running out to the car, opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat. The moment the passenger door was closed, Beth slammed her ’02 Mercury into gear and began backing rapidly down the driveway, looking over her shoulder to make sure the way was clear and backing into the street without stopping.

“Mom!” Amy squeaked, in amazement at her mother’s rapid-fire driving. By the time the word was out of the 18-year old’s lips, though, Beth had slipped the car into drive and was racing down the street, trying frantically to make it to the store before it closed at 5:30.

“Dad,” Beth snapped, “this is getting to be really annoying, you know! It’s the third time this week, and if we miss the closing time it’ll be the second time in a month we did because you couldn’t be ready on time!”

“I’m sorry, Baby,” Kent Conrad said soothingly, looking a bit guilty. “I know I should have been ready, but I lost track of time and-”

“You’re always losing track of time,” the 34 year old said, “or losing track of what you’re doing or otherwise not paying attention. If you hadn’t been so damned careless you wouldn’t have gotten that third speeding ticket and I wouldn’t have to play taxi for you every day!”

It was true, of course. Kent Conrad was a local businessman of some note, he’d been a self-made millionaire by the time he was 30…and had lost it gambling before he was 40. He had managed to ‘get clean’ from the gambling bug, and had refounded his business and expanded it so that he again had a net worth in the six figures, but it had been a hard time for the Conrad family between the two periods of success.

His marriage had nearly broken up over it, and his daughter had been in her teens at the time and had been all too aware of how precarious things had been. Beth had not exactly dealt well with the tension, managing to get herself knocked up at the age of 16 after a drunken party.

But the brown-haired single-mother had managed, by dint of a tremendous amount of hard work and a lot of self-discipline, to turn her life around after that, and she had raised her daughter Amy to be a remarkably mature and talented young woman, who was currently in her freshman year at the local community college. She had inherited her father’s business acumen, and when Kent had begun rebuilding his business his daughter had joined him.

When Kent had first been getting started (again), Beth had acted as his assistant, secretary, receptionist, and general right-hand. As the business had taken off other people had been hired to fill those roles, leaving Beth as the chief financial officer, which in a business the size of Conrad Construction, basically meant main accountant. But Beth was good at it, and the business gave them all a good living now.

Yes, things were good…except that her father’s lack of personal self-discipline maddened her. He was quite responsible with the business, but in his personal life there was a carelessness that left Beth ready to scream, it not only made his own life harder for him but it kept spilling over into other people’s, like her own.

This current mess was a case in point: her father had managed to get a third speeding ticket out of sheer carelessness, and he had been quite lucky that there had not been a DUI to go with it. His drivers’ license was suspended, which meant that his daughter had to drive him to and from work (and other places).

Now, yet again, his failure to be ready to go when it was time to leave the office had put her behind schedule to pick up her laundry, as she regularly did on Friday, at the cleaning service, and she was afraid she’d miss it if they didn’t hurry. Which would leave her with only a handful of clean clothes on hand for the weekend.

They rounded the corner of Sixth and Vine, Beth still seething at this whole situation. Beside her, Kent had the brains not to say much given his daughter’s mood, and Amy likewise felt it best not to stir the pot just then, she’d seen her mother’s temper explode occasionally.

Finally, they came racing up to the laundry shop and Beth slammed on the brake, throwing the car in park and jumping out. She dashed to the door, only to see that the CLOSED sign was hanging in the window, and she knew they missed it, and she wouldn’t be able to pick up her clean clothes until Monday morning.

“DAMN!” she cursed. “Not again!”

As they drove away, Beth was seething, and she had not calmed down even after they left the city limits and entered the rural farmland around the edge of town. Kent made the mistake of starting to say something.

“I’m sorry, Darling,” her father said soothingly, “but these things do happen. Maybe we can call them and they’ll let you come in and pick them up tomorrow.”

Beth didn’t know what it was about hearing that, but it finally caused something in the seething woman to snap. She slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a dead halt in the gravel road that led toward Kent’s home.

“We shouldn’t FUCKING HALF TO DO THAT, DAD!” she screeched. “If you would just grow up and be on time for once, quit delaying everything while everyone around you waits for your convenience, we wouldn’t even have these problems!”

Amy stared at her mother in stunned shock, and the look on her pretty face was not too different from the stunned expression on her father’s face. But Beth was on a roll, and for about five minutes she listed her father’s offenses, all the times he’d been late and made her late, the times she’d had to cover for him because he was late to meet someone, the times she’d had to go out of her way to fix up something he’d carelessly left undone. By the time she finished, Kent looked almost overwhelmed by his daughter’s rage and Amy seemed to be in shock.

“Daddy,” Beth said, “if you were not 55 years old, I swear I’d take you over my knee right now for putting us in this position! In fact, I’m tempted to do it anyway!”

“What?!” Kent said in confusion. “You can’t be-”

“Oh can’t I?” Beth said, her mind racing as she realized something interesting, she _did_ have leverage! “You know what, Daddy? I’m tired of playing taxi driver for you, and I’m sick and tired of you drifting through life while the rest of us bust our asses to cover for you! So you have two choices: either you agree to take whatever punishment I decide to give you, right here and right now, or you can find your ride home, hire a taxi, I don’t care. One or the other!”

Amy stared in disbelief, but Beth was grinning savagely. She knew her father would not take the taxi option, because getting home that way would require explaining to his wife, Amy’s mother, why she wouldn’t give him a ride any more, and he’d never hear the end of the nagging.

Kent stared at his 34 year old daughter in horror, saying, “Sweetheart, you can’t mean that!”

“Oh, but I DO mean it, Dad! Like I said, I’m very tired of this, and you need a lesson about maturity and courtesy. You’ve had a lesson coming on that subject for _years_. So which will it be?”

Beth had her father where she wanted him, and she knew it. She watched in deep satisfaction as his mind worked, seeking a way out, and realizing he had none. Either he accepted his daughter’s terms, or he lived with the nagging from her mother, and of the two, he decided that Beth was the lesser evil.

“OK, Honey, you win, whatever you want I agree.”

Beth felt a delicious excitement rise within her, this was going to be fun! Realizing her father might just change his mind if she gave him the time, Beth thought fast about what she wanted to do, and then drove the car down a tiny side road she knew of, to pull the car to a stop on the edge of a field of corn.

It was about six thirty on a summer afternoon, quite warm and pleasant and with plenty of daylight, as Beth got out of the car and said, “Dad, get out of the car. You are going to get your fanny spanked!”

“Mom, are you really going to-?!”

“Yes, Honey, your grandfather has a blistering coming and he’s getting every bit of it!”

The 18 year old got out of the back seat, her blue eyes wide as she stared at the unfolding scene.

“OK, Daddy,” Beth said, “take your clothes off, and bend over the trunk of the car!”

“I can’t take off everything!” Kent protested. “Not in front of Amy!”

“Oh relax, Dad,” Beth said with a smirk. “She’s eighteen years old and I know for a fact you won’t be the first naked man she’s seen, right Amy?”

At her mother’s knowing glance, Amy blushed scarlet and stammered something which only seemed to make her mother more amused.

Reluctantly, blushing scarlet, muttering in humiliation, the silver-haired grandfather unlaced and removed his shoes, and took off hsi dark socks. His blush deepened as he unbuckled his belt and slid his suit pants down and stepped out of them. Then, his heart pounding in his ears and feeling like he might die of mortification, he took off his tie, jacket, and white shirt, leaving himself clad in a pair of boxers.

Amy was staring wide-eyed, but a grin was starting to appear on her pretty face. Beth, for her part, was reveling in the payback and in the delicious feeling of sheer power as she made her father strip. This was even more fun than she’d expected!

“Please, Sweetheart,” Kent begged, “don’t make me-”

“Get ’em off, Daddy! I want you naked as the day you were born!” Beth laughed. “Either you take them off or the deal’s off!”