Sanitary Napkin Memories

While I love to read the more she-geared blogs and subscribe to several of them, I tend to stay away from words
like "vagina" and "tampon" and "girly bits" in my posts.
Not for any PC reason, I just don't have to talk about it in order to have one. At any rate, today is a special day.

I was chatting with my mother today and we got into a discussion about menstrual pads. Now, contrary to what various advertisement agencies will have you believe from their life's work of 30-second spot commercials during prime time t.v., women don't actually sit around discussing their
preferred methods of catching "Aunt Flo." However, my 13 year old daughter is getting around that age where we expect she'll be starting her period soon. This doesn't seem like a
big deal, does it? It is. My daughter has what the "experts" call Pervasive Developmental Delays with Autistic Tendencies (PDD/AT). Whatever the hell that actually means, I don't know. I do know that she is pretty verbal and smart and reads and talks and writes in both Arabic and English. She learns visually and doesn't "get it" when you're trying to explain some abstract thing that she can't see. And since I had a hysterectomy about 8 years ago, I can't exactly "accidentally on purpose" let her see me change a pad in order for her to freak out on my menstruating...because I don't. So...back to Sanitary Napkin Memory Lane.
I mentioned ALWAYS with wings to my mom and she said those damn wings always flip over and cause some serious damage to pubic hair. And I started to laugh. Loudly. I had
flashed back to a memory of high school. Yeah, of course, it
had to happen there. It's funny NOW that I can look back from 24 years later...but when it happened. I didn't laugh so much as I cried.
In 1986, we only had to have 20 credits total to graduate high school. I'm sure things have changed since then. But my dad was ahead of the school board apparently. He frowned upon any non-academic electives and constantly pushed me to take extra academic courses, like extra math or science classes. He also encouraged me to take a paralegal course at the community college a couple of nights a week just to see if I really wanted to be a lawyer. Anyway, at the end of my senior year, I had 24 academic credits and some college credits to boot. So a week or so before graduation, there was an assembly for seniors. And I got an Achievement Award.
And I was on my period.
Mr. Reynolds, the assistant principal, called my name to come up on stage in the auditorium. My friend, Vickie, was sitting next to me. She knew I was on the rag since I had to borrow a pad from her since I had run out. As I started to stand up, I whispered to her, "Oh man. I think this pad has turned upside down." I straightened up and I felt lightening bolts shooting through the old hoo-hoo. I let out an "owww"
that was only heard by Vickie due to the applause of the other seniors. I proceeded to walk as carefully as possible up the EIGHT STEPS to get to the top of the stage and by the time I got to shake hands with Mr. Reynolds and take my award, tears were streaming down my now red face. I was certain that my lower extremities now had that "Brazilian body wax" look and I carefully lowered myself into the seat next to Vickie, who was now sitting cross-legged trying not to wet her pants while she died laughing.
I wasn't tragically scarred for life, physically or psychologically due to this event. But now I find it a bit amusing. Regarding my daughter, it looks as though I'm going to have to wear a pad with "monkey blood" on it in order to
get her slightly used to seeing the ole "big girl bandaids" each month. Hopefully, she won't follow in her mom's footsteps of Introduction to Bikini Waxing in a public place.