I Am Woman, Hear Me Whimper

(Some really neat and creative blog friends recently held a writing competition [Senior Thinking and Guarded Lily, among them - see my side bar for their addresses and go visit! You won't regret it. In fact, visit ALL my blog friends and see why they are some of my favorite people in the world!]. The qualification for the competition was that the story submitted had to center on something from childhood that changed you. I was jazzed to add my two cents when Mom got sick. That sort of derailed things, and I didn't have a chance to submit my own story. Here, belatedly, is my story of the event that changed my life, offered solely for your entertainment.)

Being a girl will eventually lead to being a woman. There's just no way to get around it, I'm afraid. Well, not without some serious surgery and intensive therapy, anyway. One of the best ways to make the transition from girl to woman is to find another girl and force her to make the journey with you. For me, that girl was Robin.

Part of being a woman is dealing with...well...women things. You know. High heels. Nylons. Shaving stuff. Boobs. Bras. Boys. And of course, the dreaded menstrual period. Now, Robin and I weren't complete twits. We knew what was eventually in store for us as far as our traitorous bodies were concerned. But no movie seen in the safety of the school room, no delicate "talk" from a loving mother, no information garnered from the bathroom walls left us feeling fully prepared for what promised to be one of life's more momentous occasions. We also realized that chances were really good that we weren't going to experience our "blossoming" at the same time. That was just scary.

I have to digress a little here so that you'll understand just what we were facing, my friends. I'm 43 years old. Thirty years ago women didn't talk about their periods. They whispered to each other behind their hands that they were soon going to "fall off," or that they were "having a visit from their 'little friend'." Women didn't ride bike, swim, or otherwise pretend that life was going to be anything but miserable for at least one week out of the month. When they weren't working, they stayed home and suffered silently, like the good martyrs they were. Then, too, they didn't have the mind-boggling array of feminine products we do today. The only things women knew about that had wings were birds. There were two choices. Sanitary pads the size of small throw pillows, threaded into and held in place with an elastic belt (the ugly cousin to a garter belt, I suppose) or tampons. Tampons came in one size with one style applicator, and from one manufacturer - Tampex. "Good girls" wore sanitary napkins, and "Wild Girls" put their hymens and reputations at risk and used tampons. Those were the facts of life Robin and I faced.

We reviewed our options. We did research regarding products on the market. We conducted interviews with older, already blossomed friends. None of those things helped ease the anxiety. We needed solid answers. We needed...Sharon.

Sharon was Robin's older sister. She was a fount of information on all sorts of really amazing topics. She taught us how to inhale when we smoked, how to buy bras that would guarantee maximum volume for our minimum breasts, and how to pour a beer without making a "head". It was only natural that we'd turn to her for advice. Sharon was 11 years older than us, and she was a bona fide "Wild Girl." We both wanted to BE Sharon when we grew up.

When we approached our guru about this, Sharon's sage advice was to skip the horror of wearing throw pillows between our legs and to begin as we intended to continue - using tampons. That was good enough for us! Sharon had spoken, and we were her eager disciples. Besides, she was going to spring for the box of tampons, sparing us the humiliation of a trip to the drug store where just EVERYONE would know that blossoming was in the offing.

With nary a cramp in sight yet, we decided to be proactive about the whole thing. Clearly, we needed a dry run. (No pun intended.) A practice session, if you will. That way the pressure would be off by the time our time came. Sharon provided the "goods," and Robin and I got to work.

Neither one of us was too keen on admitting to the other that we didn't know WHAT the heck we were doing. Our bodies were pretty much uncharted territories at this stage in our development. So it was with some relief, albeit unspoken, that we discovered the tampons came with directions. Even a diagram! It seemed only fair to share the instructions, so we divided them up. Robin took the diagram, and I took the written directions. How hard could this be, after all? Robin casually made her way to the bathroom, and I stayed in my bedroom, also pretending total confidence in my ability to do this thing.

It seemed like only moments later that Robin was knocking on the bedroom door, announcing that everything had worked according to plan and diagram and that she was now comfortably prepared to blossom. I, on the other hand, was experiencing some technical difficulties. Actually, what I was experiencing was PAIN!

Trying very hard not to panic, I tearfully explained to Robin that there was something seriously wrong with my body. I was sure I was deformed in some hideous way. My tampon wouldn't...move. Well, not much anyway. There wasn't any "gliding" going on, that's for darn sure! And when it DID move, it HURT. When Robin offered to come in and investigate, I insisted that she just push the diagram under the door so I could figure out what was going on.

According to the picture, I was doing everything right. But it was clear that something was terribly, TERRIBLY wrong. There was nothing else for it. I had to further explore. Grabbing a mirror from the bathroom closet, I set about discovering my anatomy. I've got to tell you, I saw things in that mirror that I never want to see again in my LIFE.

What I eventually discovered was that there are actually TWO openings in a woman's... well...down THERE. One opening is designed to take things IN, and the other is designed to...erm... not. I was trying to insert the tampon into "not" opening. That little realization shed a lot of light on why I was in pain at the moment.

Two openings. Who knew? Probably every freaking girl/woman in the world but me.

Okay, so it may not be the most noble story. It may not be the most moving story. But it certainly explains my fear of some of the intimate acts between a man and woman that earn really high scores on online kinky tests. In that way, it did indeed change my life. I'll never be a "Wild Child." Funnily enough, that doesn't bother me. ;-)