I was standing on a down escalator in the Kiev metro today when I saw two girls in their late teens fooling around at the bottom of the empty up escalator: going a short way up, then jogging against the motion trying to get down again, amidst squeals and giggles.
Very shortly, an announcement from the metro warden came over the speakers, admonishing them to stop messing around. The girls looked sheepish, and stood on the escalator properly, letting them carry them up to the surface.
I imagined the metro warden waiting for them at the top. The wardens in the Kiev metro are usually women of a pre-retirement age or just above, stern and quite scary. They wear uniforms. They have the strictest manner on the planet.
This particular warden would stop the two young ladies at the top of the escalator and descend upon them like a ton of bricks with a no-nonsense scolding. She would lecture them about how dangerous it is to fool around on any staircase, let alone a moving one. She would point out the new rules, according to witch the wardens have new powers of disciplining offenders on the spot. She would offer them a choice: a fine or ten licks with the station strap.
Rich people in Kiev don’t take the metro: the girls couldn’t afford the fine. Reluctantly, with a great deal of embarrassment, they would agree to the strap. This would be delivered in the wardens’ office, a tiny room carved out of the wall of the station. On the bare, of course, though the girls wouldn’t be entirely sure whether the warden really had the right to make them take down the knickers.
There would be some yelps and sniffles, but ten licks each later, they would finally be sent on their way. The warden would return to her booth at the top of the escalator to look out for new offenders.
The London Underground, the Paris Metro, or New York Subways, could find such goings on also, and the same measure by a inspector, or warden, applying to such naughty woman would also do a world of good, namely a well-spanked bare bottom, be it with a strap, birchrod, or cane.
I love thinking of situations like that. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. There was the one about the store manager who decides to spank the shoplifting teenage girl instead of calling the police. That’s an OLD one. : )