When I was 11 years old I got it. I was totally in school, like when it happened, not just in general but like specifically. I was in 5th grade at St. Paul’s Academy and it was sometime after lunch and in the middle of geography. We were somewhere in the midwest, when I started feeling really hot and kind of icky. My vision started to tunnel and my joints went liquid on me. I remember sliding down in my desk thinking this is bad because I had opted for the skirt option at my catholic school. We gals were allowed to wear either a jumper, a skirt or a slimming and ultra femme pair of bellbottom slacks. All were plaid and made out of a synthetic material that was as soft as corrugated cardboard. So there I was sinking deeper and deeper into the desk, knowing I was bound for the floor but had little control over it. Knowing that my skirt was going to end up over my head. Knowing because of alphabetical seating I was sitting in the 3rd row from the front visible to all. Happily nature took over and I passed right the F out. The next thing I know I woke up in the nurse’s office. My parents were on the way. I had got my period.
I didn’t say much in the backseat of the bronco. When I got home my mom gave me a panty liner and a couple of tylenol. That was the year’s biggest underestimation. In about 30 seconds I had gone through both and was officially “irritable.” I frantically layered panty liner on top of panty liner to form some sort of forcefield to protect myself. Fifteen minutes later my mom called me downstairs for dinner. All the blood had already drained from my face but now I was filled with sheer and unimaginable terror. This was normally a pretty favorite part of my day. Why wouldn’t be? My mom made the kick ass dinners and feeding time was always a hoot-n-nanny. That night’s dinner table would have the usual suspects of my mom, my dad, my three brothers and that evening’s special guests included Mark’s friends Mike, Marv and his girlfriend Mary Elizabeth Louise Siobhan McIrish. All were seated at the table and I came down with a sour puss on my face a bloated and aching belly and tears brimming my eyes.
Please dear god don’t let them know there’s anything different about me. Please! Please! Please! I will say the rosary every day and never lie again and never think those thoughts about John ever again just PLEEEEEEAAASSSEE don’t let my brothers, their friends or their girlfriends look at me at all or know in any way that I am bleeding out of my vagina.
Although prior to that moment I had totally prayed for my period to come ever since my mother had given us the talk in school that year. ( Oh, yeah, my mom being a nurse in the Labor/Delivery unit at the hospital and an all around community supporter was the health practitioner that came in and gave the 5th grade boys the wet dream talk and the girls this is your uterus and here’s what your about to deal w/ for the next 30-40 years. Yeah. my mom talked to my male classmates about proper care and handling of their members. Yup. And P.S., she failed to teach us a proper Kegel exercise and I think that’s crap and it should be instilled in that speech for future health classes world wide. http://www.kegel-exercises.com/) So anyway, yeah while myself and every other girl in class had read “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.” and we had all prayed at sleepovers for it, no one’s really prepared for it. Well at least, I wasn’t. I had no older sisters. My mom was super open about the functions of the body and we all knew what was what and what did what but there’s only so much one can learn until it’s you and the box of Kotex. And I wasn’t prepared for entering our orange kitchen with spaghetti and sauce being served to have all eyes on me and my brother Eric to say, “here peabrain do you want to sit at the head of the table?” snicker snicker snicker. And for Mary Elizabeth Margaret McShamrock Shake to say “HEYYYY, you guys leave her alone, it’s beautiful…..lex’s is a woman now.”
yeah, go ahead, let that sink in.
I’m 11 years old and just got called out as a woman by my brother’s girlfriend in front of SIX males. Needless to say, tears spurted out my eyes and I immediately retreated to the upstairs bathroom to weep in total embarrassment. I have no idea if I came back down for dinner that night but rest assured, later that year, we had venison for dinner one night and no one told Mary Elizabeth Catherine McErinGoBragh that venison meant deer until after she ate it. And when her blue eyes rimmed with tears and she asked “I ju..ju…ju…just ate BBBBBAMBI?” You can bet your sweet ass I laughed so hard I fell off the bench.
