The Thin End of the Wedge

Rose is one who has always found it hard to apologise; she maintains she does no wrong.  In fact she isn't a naughty girl, doesn't smoke, drive fast,  spend much money on my credit card (she has no access to it anyway) swear or become much overweight.  She does neglect stuff, though. Twenty years ago she used sometimes to apologise, but always tacked on a sentence or two purporting to show that it couldn't be avoided or was my fault anyway.  She doesn't do that much nowadays, I am happy to say.

OK.  She agreed with me some weeks ago that her laptop (and mine) would be closed down by 10:30 p.m.  Last night hers was still open at 10:33, and that isn't the first time she has broken the agreement.  So when we were in bed and I had made sure sure she was in a good mood, I said to her:

  "We have an agreement that laptops will be off by 10:30, and yours was still on at 10:33, maybe later.  I'm going to test your sincerity.  Will you agree that if your computer is not shut down by 10:30 YOU will come to ME and apologise, admit that you were late shutting down your computer by, for example, three minutes, and ask me to give you three smacks with the hairbrush?  One smack for every minute?"

To my surprise she answered with a giggle,  "Tee-hee!  Yes, all right!"

I ran with this and continued, "And if you don't come to me straightaway but I find out and have to confront you with it, it will be double - two smacks for each minute?"

There was no laugh in response to that, I was sorry to note.  I will try to find out if the computer (Windows XP) keeps a log file of times of events, if it does it may come in very useful.  I will type out this agreement and ask her to sign it, we'll take it from there.