Foreword: The setting of this tale is 1978 at St. Mark’s Catholic School in Atwater, Pennsylvania, back in the days of corporal punishment.
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“Owww that hurts!” Kelly cried out whipping her head around and swatting at the hands of the girl seated behind her.
“Is there a problem back there?” Sister Judy demanded, pausing her instruction momentarily and glaring in their direction at the rear of the 8th grade classroom.
“Cindy keeps pulling on my ponytail,” Kelly whined from the back of the room. “I told her to stop doing it and she just won’t.”
“Keep your hands to yourself, both of you and pay attention to the lesson Cynthia!” the old nun commanded. “If I have to tell you again, you will be in trouble.” She turned her attention back to the chalkboard and continued writing out definitions.
Five minutes later…..
“Stop it, that hurts!” Kelly whined again. “Sister Judy…..Cindy is pulling on my ponytail again…..”
The nun stopped writing and turned around again. “Cynthia, I warned you,” she snapped in a angry voice.
“But she keeps swinging her long ponytail back and forth across my desk and I can’t concentrate,” Cindy explained, tugging on the long brown ponytail again for emphasis.
“Owwwww! Make her stop,” Kelly cried out again.
“Cynthia Allen! Come up here this instant!” Sister Judy demanded, picking up her long wooden ruler and tapping the end on top of her desk.
“But….but….but….” Cindy sputtered.
“Now! I won’t tell you again young lady!” the nun announced sternly.
Cindy pouted and stood up, flipping back her long blonde hair. She trudged down the aisle in her schoolgirl uniform, consisting of a frilly white blouse with a navy blue tie, a dark green and navy blue plaid skirt and white knee socks with black pumps. The bottom edge of her skirt occassionly flipped up with each step.
Cindy approached the front of the classroom as Sister Judy stood by her desk waiting impatiently. The rest of the class sat completely still with all mouths wide open waiting for what would happen next.
Cindy was a very pretty blossoming young girl, but she was quite a handful when it came to discipline. She was always bending the rules to see how much she could get away with. Disrupting class, being late for class, skipping class all together, flirting with boys, and now pulling other girl’s hair.
Sister Judy had had enough over the last several weeks and she was at her breaking point. Things were not looking good for Cindy at the moment.
“Bend over the edge of my desk now!” Sister Judy told Cindy.
“You can’t be serious? In front of the whole class?” Cindy whined.
“I’m serious, bend over.” Sister Judy apparently meant business and there was no getting out of this mess.
Cindy begrudgingly did as she was told, placing her hands and elbows on the top surface of Sister Judy’s desk and leaning forward, her skirt rising up to reveal more of her bare legs.
Sister Judy raised her ruler up and brought it down on Cindy’s backside with a loud crack that echoed throughout the classroom. Cindy yelped and flinched not only from the stinging pain but the embarrassment of being on the recieving end of this punishment in front of her classmates.
The ruler was raised and lowered again and again and again as Cindy fought back tears with each resounding wack. The fabric of her skirt and panties did little to ease the blows being dished out by Sister Judy.
Cindy was at the end of her rope by time the last two solid smacks came. Her legs were almost ready to give out when Sister Judy told Cindy to stand up straight and turn to face her. Cindy forced herself upright, swaying awkwardly from the pain on her behind.
As Cindy turned, the nun was sliding out her metal chair from the desk and placing it in the open space, facing toward her classmates.
“Now I hope you are learning a lesson young lady. It’s time for you to take a seat,” the old nun stated sternly.
“What are you going to do?” Cindy asked, now suddenly terrified.
“I have one more lesson. Sit down now Cindy!” Sister Judy said in a harsh voice.
Shaking nervously, Cindy lowered herself into the metal chair, wincing as her skirt rose and the cold metal met her bare thighs and the searing pain on her behind.
Her shaking hand tossed her long blonde hair back over her shoulder as she stared at her classmates. Some faces were filled with concern, others filled with pity. Cindy turned red in the face with embarrassment, wishing she was anywhere else but right here.
Sister Judy fumbled through a drawer in her desk until she located a comb and a pair of scissors. She shuffled over and stood in front of Cindy. Cindy was terrified when she laid eyes on the tools in the nun’s gnarly old hands.
“My, my, I certainly have my work cut out for me, such long beautiful hair. I’m afraid it’s all going to waste now,” Sister Judy lamented as she reached out a stroked the soft blonde locks at her forehead with her fingertips. Cindy flinched and slid forward on the chair.
“Now sit back and relax, and fold your hands in your lap. We are going to take your hair down very short. You just sit there and think about what you have done lately,” Sister Judy rasped. “It’s been quite awhile since I’ve cut hair but I will do the best that I can.”
Starting right at the front, the old nun combed up a long silky strand of Cindy’s beautifully blonde hair right at her forehead. She held it out momentarily with her fingers and snipped it off to about three inches in length. The silky wave fluttered down to rest on the floor beside the chair. There were several gasps heard throughout the room as everyone watched Cindy’s face for her reaction. Cindy just stared forward glumly, now resigned to her fate.
The scissors from the desk weren’t the sharpest for cutting hair but they would have to do in a pinch. Sister Judy combed out the next strand and sliced it off, roughly the same length as the one before. A resilient snip snip snip was the only sound in the classroom as Sister Judy fed the hungry scissors hanks of silky blonde hair, one long strand at a time.
Discarded hair was slowly piling up in Cindy’s lap and around the chair on the floor as the shearing continued. Cindy was dead silent as her lifeless tresses were raining down, apart of her no more. She was slowly being defeated as Sister Judy was making her pay for her sins.
Snip snip snip went the scissors, as they continued their path of destruction through Cindy’s mane without remorse. Cindy had absent mindedly dropped her head forward as the haircutting continued in order to avoid the stares from her classmates. Sister Judy paused for a moment to place her fingers underneath Cindy’s chin and lift it back up. “Keep your chin up until I am finished young lady.”
Cindy closed her eyes for a moment, pretending that when she opened them, she would find out that this was all just a dream. Sadly that was not the case. The crowning glory that she had taken care of for so many years continued to fall as Sister Judy rotated around the chair removing more hair.
Snip, snip, snip. The rhythmic combing and snipping continued as lock after lock of golden hair was lopped off. Sister Judy focused solely on the task at hand, teaching this girl a lesson, one that she wouldn’t soon forget.
Once the top was cut down to size, Sister Judy attacked the back and sides, reducing everything to about three inches in length. Cindy’s bare neck slowly became visible as the long hair was removed, as well as the lower edges of her ears.
In no time, the final long strand was lopped off in front of Cindy’s right ear and the scissors fell silent momentarily.
“That’s much better already. You had enough hair for two girls. Well it’s all getting cleaned up now and there is still more to come,” Sister Judy explained. “It’s time to shorten it up a bit more and make it look presentable.”
“I’m going to look like a boy,” Cindy whimpered sadly in the chair.
“Well Cynthia, you should have thought of that before you began your wild streak of mischief,” the nun stated sternly. “Only naughty girls have to get short haircuts like this.”
Sister Judy lifted the hair on the side of Cindy’s head with the comb and reduced it further to about two inches from the scalp. Snip snip snip. She continued to lift and cut, lift and cut, shortening everything that remained down to a more uniform two inches in length.
When she was finally satisfied with the overall length, Sister Judy inserted the scissors at Cindy’s forehead and gave her very blunt bangs that barely hung halfway down her forehead. Tilting Cindy’s head as she worked, Sister Judy sharpened up the hairline by running the scissors along the sides, cutting cleanly around her ears. The scissors continued snipping across her bare neck and then abruptly fell silent again. A faint whiteness along Cindy’s new hairline was now visible, showing where the long hair had previously covered up around her ears and neck.
Sister Judy straightened up the collar of Cindy’s blouse, now completely free of long tangled blonde hair, and finally stepped back to observe her finished masterpiece. After nodding her head in satisfaction, she stepped back up to Cindy and used the comb to rake through the shortened blonde hair to remove any loose pieces and fluff it up a bit.
“There you go Cynthia, that is one drastic haircut for you to think about for a long time. Now you have a nice and tidy looking short cut that will better suit a young schoolgirl like you. Maybe you won’t be pulling other girl’s ponytails for awhile. I hope you learned your lesson.”
Cindy saw several students in the classroom pointing directly at her and heard others laughing, causing her face to blossom to a severe shade of red from embarrassment. She heard catcalls coming from different directions taking direct aim at her plight at the whims of Sister Judy. Kelly was smiling triumphantly from the back of the room; radiating with pure delight upon seeing a proper act of revenge carried out against her adversary.
As Sister Judy watched, Cindy looked down sadly and saw the lifeless pieces of her hair littering her lap and the floor. A shaking hand reached up and the fingertips began to explore the shortened bits that remained attached to her scalp. Cindy cringed sadly and did the only thing that her mind would allow her to do at the moment, burst into tears.
Cindy’s classmates had just witnessed one of their own getting shorn of her beautiful locks as a result of bad behavior. They all now understood what Sister Judy was capable of and they all had just been taught a valuable lesson going forward.
Thank you for reading! This story is one of my favorites.
