![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I was just reminded of something that happened long, long ago, back when my own personal plumbing equipment was first starting to do its adult thing. In those days, my Mom cautioned me against tampons. In her mind, using a tampon was like being fingerblasted by Satan himself, and she'd have none of it for herself or her daughters.
And so I was stuck riding the fat cotton pony: maxi pads approximately the same size and shape as size as a crappity sleeping bag. These were the sort of thing that announced to anyone who glanced below waist level that you were most assuredly on the rag. No matter how baggy my pants, the damned things would often poke out from the back, giving me the appearance of a poorly-hidden rudimentary tail. To top it off, when I sat down, I'd be about an inch taller until the squelch kicked in.
Yuck.
So it was with a certain amount of illicit naughtiness that I'd leaf through teenybopper girl magazines with their ubiquitous ads on feminine hygiene. There, between the ads for beltless sanitary napkins and floral douches, I'd find advertisements for the sexy, sexy tampon.
What was a pubescent girl to do when presented with this cure for pad-induced diaper rash? I read the ads furtively, and noted that most of them offered a sample kit with a free tampon starter kit and instruction manual which would arrive in the mail in a discrete, unmarked package. Since I couldn't afford to purchase tampons at the store, and had no way of doing so without it being noticed by Mom, I decided to write a letter to Tampax and get one of these magical kits.
One day, the package arrived. I felt a frisson of guilt and naughtiness. I had a tampon. Next time Aunt Flo came to visit, I was going to take that tampon and jam it right up my wazoo! Oh yes, yes!
Menarche is a crazy time, in case you've forgotten or don't know. Your monthlies aren't necessarily monthly, and with the hormonal shitstorm that is puberty, everything doesn't work in an orderly fashion. It's hit and miss. Sometimes you'll gush like an oil geyser without warning, and other times the pressure will build and build for weeks, and your damned endometrium just plain refuses to slough itself off. Or when it finally does, it takes its own sweet time and goes on for a few weeks at a time.
Have empathy for girls at this stage. It is a deeply unpleasant time.
Anyhow, the bloodgates opened, and I opened my mysterious guide to internal hygiene. I was confronted with an unattractive cardboard tube with a bunch of cotton jammed inside. I looked at it skeptically, then read the instruction manual. It seemed pretty straight-forward.
It wasn't.
Not everyone is built the same. I jammed and jammed that thing, but it was going nowhere. I ended up destroying it against my tender bits. I gave up in frustration and used another giant maxi pad.
*grumble grumble*
After a day or so, I decided I was going to give it another go. I opened another package. This one looked quite different. It looked like a plastic bullet. Bang bang.... This time, the thing was going in. I was determined.
I put a leg up on the bed and attacked my nether regions with the blood torpedo. It was hard work. It was painful work. But with perseverance, I finally got the thing in and voila! Cotton hypodermic. I had successfully injected myself with a wad of cotton.
By that point, it was quite late, and I still had homework to do, so I did some homework, forgot all about the tampon, and fell asleep.
The next morning, I was awoken by the shrill ringing of the telephone. This was back in the time when I used to wake up en route to the phone, and this time, I woke up running to the phone all while experiencing an utterly bizarre sensation while simultaneously hearing a strange farting noise.
I was farting! But not from my ass!
What the fuck? This was NOT in the instruction manual!
The whole time I ran to the phone, it felt like a half gallon of air was escaping from around the cotton wadded up inside me.
I didn't use a tampon again for years.
And so I was stuck riding the fat cotton pony: maxi pads approximately the same size and shape as size as a crappity sleeping bag. These were the sort of thing that announced to anyone who glanced below waist level that you were most assuredly on the rag. No matter how baggy my pants, the damned things would often poke out from the back, giving me the appearance of a poorly-hidden rudimentary tail. To top it off, when I sat down, I'd be about an inch taller until the squelch kicked in.
Yuck.
So it was with a certain amount of illicit naughtiness that I'd leaf through teenybopper girl magazines with their ubiquitous ads on feminine hygiene. There, between the ads for beltless sanitary napkins and floral douches, I'd find advertisements for the sexy, sexy tampon.
What was a pubescent girl to do when presented with this cure for pad-induced diaper rash? I read the ads furtively, and noted that most of them offered a sample kit with a free tampon starter kit and instruction manual which would arrive in the mail in a discrete, unmarked package. Since I couldn't afford to purchase tampons at the store, and had no way of doing so without it being noticed by Mom, I decided to write a letter to Tampax and get one of these magical kits.
One day, the package arrived. I felt a frisson of guilt and naughtiness. I had a tampon. Next time Aunt Flo came to visit, I was going to take that tampon and jam it right up my wazoo! Oh yes, yes!
Menarche is a crazy time, in case you've forgotten or don't know. Your monthlies aren't necessarily monthly, and with the hormonal shitstorm that is puberty, everything doesn't work in an orderly fashion. It's hit and miss. Sometimes you'll gush like an oil geyser without warning, and other times the pressure will build and build for weeks, and your damned endometrium just plain refuses to slough itself off. Or when it finally does, it takes its own sweet time and goes on for a few weeks at a time.
Have empathy for girls at this stage. It is a deeply unpleasant time.
Anyhow, the bloodgates opened, and I opened my mysterious guide to internal hygiene. I was confronted with an unattractive cardboard tube with a bunch of cotton jammed inside. I looked at it skeptically, then read the instruction manual. It seemed pretty straight-forward.
It wasn't.
Not everyone is built the same. I jammed and jammed that thing, but it was going nowhere. I ended up destroying it against my tender bits. I gave up in frustration and used another giant maxi pad.
*grumble grumble*
After a day or so, I decided I was going to give it another go. I opened another package. This one looked quite different. It looked like a plastic bullet. Bang bang.... This time, the thing was going in. I was determined.
I put a leg up on the bed and attacked my nether regions with the blood torpedo. It was hard work. It was painful work. But with perseverance, I finally got the thing in and voila! Cotton hypodermic. I had successfully injected myself with a wad of cotton.
By that point, it was quite late, and I still had homework to do, so I did some homework, forgot all about the tampon, and fell asleep.
The next morning, I was awoken by the shrill ringing of the telephone. This was back in the time when I used to wake up en route to the phone, and this time, I woke up running to the phone all while experiencing an utterly bizarre sensation while simultaneously hearing a strange farting noise.
I was farting! But not from my ass!
What the fuck? This was NOT in the instruction manual!
The whole time I ran to the phone, it felt like a half gallon of air was escaping from around the cotton wadded up inside me.
I didn't use a tampon again for years.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 02:01 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 02:16 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 03:10 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-07-13 03:43 am (UTC)From:The first time I used a tampon, the fucking string broke off when I tried to pull it out. It took me half an hour (in a public restroom) to get the damn thing out. For awhile I thought I was going to have to go to the electronics lab and grab a pair of hemostats to deal with it! That put me off them for awhile, but the agony of the cotton horse won over my fear.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-17 02:22 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2013-07-17 05:37 am (UTC)From:Perhaps, like her, and possibly me, you also have a retroverted uterus? My natural body shape when I was younger was so very similar to yours as well, and mum has slim hips as well.