Dear Stepfamily Magazine:

This letter is in response to your call for nominations in your April issue. I would like to nominate my husband, Dick, to be named your magazine's Stepfather of the Year.

Dick and I were married four years ago, but your posted rules said that I should share anything in the nominated stepparent's history, not just stuff from this year, so I guess I'll start there. Now technically, I am a stepmother, since Dick has a daughter by his first marriage. I've never met my stepdaughter, Lolita, however, since somehow Dick's ex got sole custody and the right to keep Dick away from his own now-seventeen-year-old daughter. Dick doesn't like to talk about the divorce, so I don't know what lie that shrew told the judge in order to get such an unusual constraint on him about not seeing his daughter. Anyway, Dick moved away from their state and then met me.

Well actually, he then met both me and my daughter, Kitty, who was ten years old at the time. Despite the negative experience he had just had with his own family, Dick did not hesitate to marry me, even though I already had a daughter. And it's not like he didn't know right from the start — Kitty was with me the day I met him, at the roller rink where I was chaperoning Kitty's class from St. Catherine's Catholic School for Girls. You see, it was a special day at the rink, and they were hosting all the Catholic schoolgirls in the city. I'm not sure what brought Dick to the rink that day, sheer good fortune for me, I suppose, but there he was. He took to me right away, I must say, and didn't seem to mind at all that Kitty was so obviously part of the package. He even complimented her that day, saying she looked really great in her school uniform, which was a sweet thing to say, since it didn't look like anything special -- just basic schoolgirl.

We got married straightaway, and Dick was such a dear, he insisted we even take Kitty on our honeymoon with us, to Brazil. He didn't seem at all embarrassed in front of either one of us when we found out our hotel had a nude beach. He just calmly stripped down and suggested that we do the same. He is so cosmopolitan!

Anyway, this is a stepfather award, so let me tell you more about his relationship with Kitty. He dotes on her!

One of the first things he changed around our household was stodgy old me! I had always insisted that Kitty wear only the most prudish clothes. Dick really won Kitty over when he insisted that I let her be more fashionable, like her friends --- actually, a lot more so than her friends. He actually took her shopping on more than one occasion and bought her the Miley Cyrus-type stuff that I always thought made a girl look like a whore. Dick taught me that those sorts of clothes actually make young girls look independent and smart.

On a similar note, when I was hemming Kitty's new school uniform skirts, he took Kitty's side (although of course, I was actually happy to see them bonding, so I didn't mind) and convinced me to "break the rules" like Kitty wanted (the skirts are supposed to be no higher than two inches above the knee, but I think a couple of them got hemmed more like six inches above the knee!). Again, this made him her hero, of course.

Kitty also has really gotten to experience a father's love for the first time. You see, she never really knew her father. For that matter, I barely knew him myself, I'm ashamed to say — teen pregnancy and all that. Although I was always a good student, I was also always a bit naïve and ditzy as a teenager. In some ways, I guess I still am. So anyway, Dick is wonderful for Kitty. He treats her like she were his own daughter!

First there's the nicknames. He started calling her "Pussycat" right from the start, although now he's got a bunch of variations: Pussy, Sweet Pussy, Baby Pussy, Girlpuss, Daddy's Pussy, and the like — you know, because her real name is Kitty. It's like they have their own special language, because he has some nicknames for Kitty that I don't understand, but she seems to like. For example, he calls her "Mexican Hairless", although we're not Hispanic. And "Bald Pussy" or just "Baldy", which is weird because she has thick, luxuriant brown hair. I know he likes those names, because she always giggles and looks at him adoringly in response, although why anyone would like to be called something that conjures the picture of a shaved cat is beyond me. But even those names are normal compared to the completely inexplicable "Three-Holer." I know Dick likes to go bowling, and he often takes Kitty with him and they'll be gone for hours, so maybe it has something to do with bowling balls.

Besides nicknames, there's "Take Your Daughter to Work Day." Not only does Dick enthusiastically participate in this, he goes all out. You see, Dick is a traveling salesman, and his work takes him on driving road trips around the region for days at a time. He has taken Kitty along on these trips for three or four days every year since we've been married. Kitty always seems to come back happy — all the attention I suppose — as well as exhausted. You'd think she didn't sleep at all during the whole trip. Must be all the excitement. She never complains about all that time in the car, either. I know it must wear on her, though, because whenever she comes back from one of these trips, she walks funny for days. I suggested to Dick that they stop at more rest areas so she can stretch her legs, but he said her legs get stretched plenty. I guess he knows best.

I've told you what a great stepfather Dick is to Kitty, but I'm sorry to say Kitty hasn't always been the best stepdaughter. She has been known to give Dick no end of trouble. What makes him such a wonderful stepfather, however, is how Dick rises to these occasions.

Very early in our marriage, Dick advised me that Kitty needed to be spanked. I was surprised, since I had never spanked her in her life! Silly me. I had neglected this duty for so long that now Dick was constantly being exasperated by the sorts of behavior that an upbringing of proper spanking could have prevented.

To tell you the truth, I have been such an ineffectual mother, that not only did I never spank Kitty, but to this day, I sometimes don't understand why certain behaviors are in fact spank-worthy. Like sometimes, she'll drop a pencil or something in front of him, and bend over at the waist and pick it up. He'll growl that "looks like you need a spanking, young lady". I guess because she turned her back on him before bending over like that is the issue, like it's rude, I don't know; or maybe because she keeps her legs straight the whole time and just bends at the waist, which I know is poor lifting technique, but then it's only a pencil, not a bag of concrete. See how useless I am when it comes to discipline? Having a Dick around to make those decisions is a blessing.

What is also a blessing is that Dick is willing to conduct the spankings himself, and Kitty's not even his own daughter! He doesn't even make me watch, but instead locks the two of them into his study whenever, as he puts it, "Daddy's Pussy needs a session."

Now, in the early days of the spankings, I used to worry that Dick would feel I had saddled him with such a naughty stepdaughter that he might fall out of love with me. He is so considerate, though. It was almost as if he understood these fears without my ever voicing them, because directly after spanking the daylights out of Kitty's ten-year-old bottom, he'd come to our bedroom to show me he still loved me (in a rather firm way, I might add, although I won't go any further since I realize you may wish to publish the winning nomination letter in your family magazine). But that was just the first couple of years. Now he stays locked in the study with Kitty after a spanking session, sometimes for over an hour. He says this is important so he can follow up her "correction" with "instruction." I sometimes wonder why he puts up with it, though, since despite how often he spanks her, and no matter how much time he spends cloistered with her after her spankings, she always needs another spanking within days. What a great guy Dick is to stay with us despite all that!

And now, dear contest judges, I have to tell you the most compelling thing of all about how caring and indulgent Dick is to me and my daughter.

Kitty, I'm afraid to say, has just turned up pregnant. Mind you, she is fourteen years old now, so it's not that outrageous (I was just seventeen when I had her, after all), but still, her horrible behavior is not the kind of thing that just every stepfather would be willing to treat as though it were a problem of his own. He has been so understanding, and fully supports my desire to not abort (Catholic and all that). But he's taking it one step further. After Kitty told me, I told Dick, who had the aplomb to act very cool and not at all shocked. What a great role model! Anyway, he took her into the study, and spanked and interrogated her every night for a week. After that extended and strenuous effort (some nights Dick spent HOURS trying to get to the bottom of things, just the two of them, one on one, and I can tell you that when he'd finally emerge, he would be totally spent), he told me that there is no way we'll ever get the name of the father out of the girl. He is willing to let it go! He even told me to never ask Kitty myself. He's so protective of her privacy!

But here is the icing on the cake. Not only is Dick letting me have my way, and allowing Kitty to take her baby to term, but he says we don't have to put it up for adoption.

Believe it or not, he actually said that he would raise the child just as if it were his own flesh and blood!

So there you have it. I certainly hope I have convinced you to name my husband Dick as the Stepfamily Magazine "Stepfather of the Year." I haven't told Dick I am entering him, so this is going to be a surprise if he wins. Dick would be so pleased to read this nominating letter in your fine magazine, so I hope he gets the chance.

Sincerely,

Ima Blind