A First Time Folly

This Are You Still to be a Virgin ad from Tampax that dates back to 1990 has got me thinking. Well, mostly it has me laughing. “Absorb like crazy”? “Plug you up”? I doubt anyone’s truly ever been “totally psyched” to try a tampon. In fact, the first time I ever tried one was a terrible and traumatic experience.

I was a member of this all-girl Southern Baptist church group as a kid called Girls in Action. Our leader was this totally creepy woman with false teeth who always smelled like Dentyne and cigarettes. Her name was Rochelle. Mrs. Rochelle. She still repulses me to this day for some reason. Anyway, we went to the lake to go swimming, and I guess I was 11 or so, and had just a few months before got my period for the first time.* I desperately wanted to go swimming with my friends, but my mom told me I’d have to use a tampon in order to get in the water.

We went to Wal-Mart and stood poring over the options before us. Words like Super and Toxic Shock Syndrome had me totally freaked. I opted for the most slender, softest tampon I could find, something that was Junior and Petal Soft and very pink and in a tiny, tiny box. For whatever reason, I didn’t practice putting in a tampon before we got to the outdoor, doorless bathroom in the motherfucking woods. Eleven year olds are not smart most times. So my mom goes in with me to act as my coach and a pitiful excuse for a door. On our march to the public park bathroom she’s insisting I be relaxed. “YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO RELAX OR THIS WON’T WORK. Got it? Now relax!”

Even though I hadn’t practiced, I’d committed that little booklet of instructions they include with tampons to memory. I’d already selected what position I’d be using.** With my mother standing watch in front of the stall, my heart a racehorse in my budding chest, I made my first ever attempt at inserting a tampon. And nearly hyperventilated. I was as far from relaxed as one can imagine, more like totally frightened of great piercing pain or stabbing a stray ovary with the applicator. I began to cry. I was so fucking scared. And beaten. Despite how much I wanted to join the others on paddle boats, to talk to the cute lifeguard who I’d seen getting a hot dog, I gave up my first try at putting in a tampon.

I stuck a thin maxi pad into my bathing suit and made my way to the blanket to watch the others swim.

For about five minutes.

There was no way I could sit there and watch Janet and Carrie and Sally playing Marco Polo without me. I looked down between my legs. The slim pad was nearly undectable in my dry suit. In fact, if you didn’t know it was there, there’d be no way you could tell. And you could tell even less than that if my bottom half was submerged in water.

Again, 11 year olds are pretty much dumb asses. So I made my way into the water, and after fending off questions from my friends, began to relax and have a good time finally. I made sure to swim up near the lifeguard stand to get a better look at the blonde freckled cutie I’d seen at the concession stand earlier. I was floating on my back, eyes closed, sticking my bug-bite, 6th grade boobs up in the air when my blood-covered maxi pad floated up near my head.

I paniced. People one by one began to notice. Laughter. “Oh my God, is that a dirty pad!!” Freaking out. Thinking I may drown from embarassment. Instead I swam away–not too fast, as to draw too much attention. I swam determinedly away from the red, bobbing maxi pad. I denied all suspicions. I told myself it didn’t happen. It was the most traumatized my pre-pubescent self had ever been.

Hard to believe I’d forgotten that story until just now. Even harder to believe I just told it to you.

Thank God for no longer being eleven.

*The first time I got my period I told all my best girlfriends about it. I was the first of us to get “the curse.” Every single one of them called me a liar.

**The foot on the toilet stance. Which, for me–I don’t know about the rest of you girls–has never facilitated an easy entrance. They might as well ask you to cross your ankles first.