I was thirteen years old when I first "became a woman." It was my thirteenth birthday and I discovered that I had entered womanhood when a friend alerted me to the fact while walking to the bus at the end of the day. Apparently middle school wasn't torturous enough and so I had to go and become a woman in front of everyone.
Right from the beginning I was seized with incapacitating pain. I'd miss days of school sobbing in pain, curled up in bed with a heating pad that doubled as a vibrating back massager. Since most girls could just take a midol, my parents took me to a doctor. A girly doctor.
I was incredibly nervous about this. And we all know that when I get nervous what I should do is not talk. But instead, I talk a lot. At thirteen I was the epitome of awkward anyway so my nervousness about the impending exam did not help matters. I was concentrating on the poster on the ceiling when the doctor asked me what I used to ease the pain of the cramps I was having.
"A heating pad, I stammered, and a v!brator."*
The doctor looked at me with a horrified expression and then excused herself to speak to my mother.
It was on the car ride home that I learned that was not, in fact, the name for the back massager. It was also during that car ride that I learned what it was, realized what I had told the doctor, and burst into tears, declaring I would never be as mortified as I was in that instant.
And that was true until the very first time I introduced Jeff to my mother.
And five minutes after introducing them she proceeded to tell him that very story.
*once again, protecting my blog from creepy google searches. I couldn't think of a way to tell the story without using the word.
