Following my mum as she moved in with her new boyfriend and his twin nineteen year old sons wasn't exactly a walk in the park for my fifteen year old self.
My stepdad was cool and my mum was happier than ever, but my new step brothers, Michael and Jason, didn't exactly welcome me with open arms.
My mum tried cheering me up and telling me that things would change once we moved in and became a unified family.
But instead of getting better, I often found myself becoming the target of their nasty pranks and bullying habits.
The rowdy twins hazed me and tormented me nearly every afternoon after I'd arrive home from school.
Sometimes, the bullying was fierce and sometimes it was mild. But the fact that it was constant in my life is what made it so unbearable.
It continued like that for the first four weeks, until finally my stepdad intervened and set his sons straight.
With my mum gone to visit her sister for the weekend, I guess the two bullies expected to have free reign over me.
After all, they usually did go around doing as they pleased.
The being said, I'm pretty sure they were as surprised as I was when Greg took matters into his own hands and put an end to their nasty little games.
After noticing how down I was, the forty-six year old man knocked on my bedroom door and came in to check on me.
He knew his sons had been giving me a hard time, but today was the first time he'd actually witnessed them teaming up against me.
Every day it was something different.
This morning, the twins had barged into my room while I was still in bed.
Jason jumped me in my sleep and pinned me down so that I couldn't move, allowing his brother Michael to lower his pants down, sit his underwear-clad butt over my protesting face and rip a giant fart into my flaring nostrils.
Greg didn't actually see them in the act, but he did come out of his room just in time to see them both exit my own, laughing in a rather hysterical manner as they escaped the scene of the crime.
I told Greg what had happened, and let's just say he wasn't too pleased.
Imagine my surprise when I walked out of my room a short while later, to find both Michael and Jason roped up on hogtied on the large living room coffee table.
"Dad, what the fuuuck!" the two bullies grunted in unison.
From the look on their faces, I could tell that neither of them were very happy with their new predicament.
Pulling me to the side, my stepdad apologized for what the two louts had done to me told me that he was gonna teach his sons a lesson they wouldn't soon forget. He then instructed me to go back to my room and fetch two pairs of my worn socks before joining him and his two good-for-nothing boys back in the living room again.
I had no idea what he needed my socks for, but I immediately complied and set a course for my bedroom, anxious to see what he had in store for the two teenage bullies.
Bending down towards the floor at the foot of my bed, I snatched up the pair of black ankle socks I'd been wearing to school for the past week and a half, and then darted back out of the bedroom and headed into the washroom so that I could find another pair of my socks.
It took quite a few minutes of digging through the big, communal laundry hamper to find them.
But in the end, I was able to fish out the pair of thick, white ankle socks I'd be wearing during the week following the move to Greg's house.
Them having been worn a few too many days and then having been left to dry up and simmer at the bottom of the laundry hamper, resulted in the once-white ankles socks coming out a little yellowish and moldy.
Whereas my black socks were oozing out a rather distinctive aroma of cheese and vinegar, my plump, white bundles were giving out a sort of stale, musty stench.
Neither of them were very pleasant to smell, mind you.
Satisfied with my quarry and not knowing what it was for, I walked over to the living room and handed my socks over to Greg before sitting myself down on the big leather couch, not far from where the captive bullies were being detained.
For a minute there, I actually though the troublesome twins were gonna be blindfolded with my socks.
But when Greg grabbed the senior twin's face and ordered him to open up, I finally understood what my odorous ankle socks were gonna be used for. They were gonna serve as gags! Gags for their mouths!
The boys screamed and cried out, but the determined construction worker made short work of their protests and ended up forcefully stuffing my socks into their gaping mouths.
Michael was physically coerced into dealing with my smelly, cheese-infested black bundles, while Jason received the crumpled up, moldy stinkers that I'd fished out from the bottom of the laundry hamper.
Neither of them were able to cope with their new gags, but Greg just didn't care.
The brutish twins broke down into some rather frantic screaming and struggling, but their dad didn't even flinch.
I watched in awe as he grabbed a big roll of clear packaging tape and looked on with great interest as he swiftly removed their ability to refuse my thick waddings.
In my socks went, and in they would remain.
A rather loud, high-pitched screeching noise echoed across the living room as numerous layers of clear, sticky adhesive were wrapped around Michael's head.
Jason received the same treatment, and my eyes followed the large adhesive roll as it went around and around his head; five, ten, fifteen times!
When my stepdad finally announced that he would be leaving to spend the afternoon and evening in town with his buddies, his now amply-gagged sons went stark crazy.
I didn't expect Greg to leave me in charge of the house.
I also didn't except to be left in charge of the two nineteen year old bullies, but that's exactly what happened.
Michael and Jason were not to be released, and I was ordered to reinforce their gags if ever I felt that the tape was beginning lose it's integrity.
It didn't, but I still ended up wrapping about a dozen or so additional layers around their already-muzzled faces...simply for the fun of it.
I spent pretty much the entire afternoon and evening sitting on the couch, watching TV and gaming on the living room console.
My two captive bullies on the other hand, spent their time wiggling around, coughing and choking beneath their oversized mouth stuffings.
Jason tried calling for help and Michael tried threatening me, but neither of them managed to get a single word out past their stinky sockgags.
You should've seen the look of humiliation on their faces as they struggled against their bonds and attempted to mouth off into their gags.
Unfortunately for them, my socks were an implacable foe.
They wanted out, but no one could hear their screams.
They tried calling for help, but my thick wads kept them silent.
Jason coughed and shook his head in disgust.
Michael struggled and attempted to work his way around the toe-flavoured stuffing.
He bit down and used his tongue to try and compress the wadding.
But as soon as he let go and tried to get some sort of complaint out, the fat, cheesy bundle would swell back up and cause his cheeks to bulge out.
"MMmmmpph!"
Whether they wanted to or not, the two nineteen year old twins would spend the rest of the evening chowing down and sucking on my crappy old, unwashed bundles.
Best of all, the clear packaging tape even allowed me to see my socks poking out from between their overstuffed lips!
This was nothing short of absolute bliss.
Things calmed down in the months that followed.
Michael and Jason eventually accepted me into the family and began treating me as one of their own.
That wasn't to say that they didn't haze me from time to time.
I was still kept on my toes, so to speak.
But ever since Greg had stepped in and given them a piece of his mind, the twins were much more careful about bullying me when their father was around.
It took some time, but by the end of the summer I'd managed to gain not only their approval, but also their respect.
And so, I happily started a new school year knowing that I had two big brothers to back me up if ever someone gave me trouble. Two big brothers....and a pair of heavily worn, cheesy old ankle socks
THE END