The Love Canal Disaster

You know how you hear a story that is so wonderfully funny you want to share it, even if it would cause someone else terrible embarrassment? If it happened to you, you probably would only tell a few privileged individuals, really close friends, maybe, people who share your sense of humor and don’t judge.   This is one of those stories. It involves things you might not want to read about, like periods and tampons. Also, you have no idea who this story involves. Don’t jump to conclusions. You don’t know who it is about, so just shut up.  Names and details have been altered to protect the innocent and the mortified.  Stop it, because you don’t know who it is. Ok, kids, here we go…

Tampons are pretty routine for the long time user, but for a young girl who is new to them, they can be rather tricky. Some girls act like they are no big deal, but a great many  teenage girls balk at the mere idea of a tampon, the idea of sticking something inside their you-know-what, in order to absorb the worst thing that ever happened to them, that happens every month for like ever, well, it just can’t get any worse. The mere mention of a tampon sends fear to their very core, or possibly their vaginas, and that creates a big problem. Why? Because in order to use a vagina properly, it must be relaxed. A tense vagina is just not very forgiving.  You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

What happens when a vagina is too tense to accept the reality of a tampon? If it’s the initial stage, then that tampon just isn’t going to go in. Then you must resort to plan B, a pad, and everyone moves on with their lives until the next trip to the bathroom or, if not soon enough, the inevitable ruined pair of shorts and ensuing humiliation.

But here’s another scenario. What if you got the tampon in, but later, it doesn’t want to come back out? What if it’s in there like Punxsutawney Phil, scared of its own shadow or the light of day? How do you get it out?

It’s not unheard of. When I was in college, a girl in my dorm forgot she had a tampon in and inserted a new one. The two of them somehow knitted themselves together, and she had to go to the health center to get them extracted. Naturally, we all talked about her because that’s what girls do. I never understood how she didn’t know she already had one locked and loaded, but she could have been drunk or stupid or something.

Sometimes you just plain can’t get it out.  It isn’t that unusual, especially at the end of one’s cycle, to have a bit of dryness in the old cooch. If your flow isn’t heavy enough to saturate the tampon, it gets, well, stuck, too dry to be budged. After yanking on the string of a dryish tampon for a while, the vagina starts to have a panic attack, and bingo, the perfect storm, or drought, since we are talking about dryness here.

I heard this story about a teenage girl who couldn’t get her tampon out. She struggled with it for a good thirty minutes, but it wouldn’t move. She panicked, and that vagina went on lockdown. The girl did what she had to do. She texted her mother.

Her mother came to her aid. On the other side of the bathroom door, to ask how she could be of assistance. The girl explained that her tampon was stuck and that she didn’t know what to do. The mother offered a few suggestions. Relax, she said. Take a few deep breaths. The girl replied that she was beyond that and she needed real help, not new age meditative bullshit propaganda. The mother suggested that she open her legs wide in an effort to maybe help the vagina stretch and yawn and maybe spit the tampon out. The girl began to cry, convinced that she was not just going to remove the tampon, but that the uterus would come out as well. The mother asked to enter the bathroom, but the girl screamed for her to go away.

The mother, who was not fond of being yelled at, went into her room, and soon after, was joined by the girl. She had tears in her eyes, desperate for help. The mother thought and thought. She suggested the girl try a lubricant of some sort, perhaps the well-known brand KY Jelly. The girl stated she didn’t have such a product. The mother thought she had given the teen some when she began using the dreaded tampons, but she was, according to her daughter, mistaken. The mother told the girl she had some personal lubricant the girl could borrow.

This is where the story gets interesting. The mother realized that if she went to retrieve the personal lubricant, the girl would discover where she kept the product. This was a detail the mother did not want the daughter to know. She asked that the girl return to her bathroom and wait for the mother to return with the lubricant.

The daughter left the room, and the mother went to the father’s nightstand, where the personal lubricant was kept. Alas, when the mother removed the bottle, she discovered that the container was almost completely empty. She knew she couldn’t hand the empty lubricant bottle to her child. The day had been traumatizing enough as it was.

The mother devised a plan and joined her daughter in the bathroom. She instructed her child to close her eyes and hold out her hand, so that the mother could dispatch some of the lubricant into the girl’s outstretched palm. The child closed her eyes and opened her hand. The mother began to vigorously shake the lubricant bottle up and down, squeezing it over her child’s open palm. Nothing happened. The mother repeated the steps, up and down, squeeze.

Are you thinking of an empty ketchup bottle right now, one with just one glob of ketchup left at the very bottom? Good, you should.

Finally, with a loud wet noise, the bottle released the last dollop of personal lubricant into the teen’s open palm. The child was visibly disturbed by both the texture and the sound of the lubricant, and asked the mother what she was supposed to do with it. The mother instructed her to slather it around the opening of the vagina and perhaps a little inside if possible, and then to relax and open her legs wide and if everything went according to plan, the vagina would release its hold and allow the tampon to pass.

The daughter instructed the mother to leave the restroom at once, and to close the door behind her. The mother waited for about twenty minutes, but the daughter never left the bathroom. The mother texted the daughter to ask if it had worked, but alas, it did not. After more time had passed, the daughter had decided to take a shower, and the heat and the water were able to accomplish what the mother’s lubricant could not. They both decided to never discuss it again.

You should do what that mother and child resolved to do. Never discuss it again. Just be glad it wasn’t you.

For Me? You Shouldn't Have

I received the oddest Christmas present today from my mother. Never mind that Christmas was two weeks ago, and it just arrived today, and given that it came with its own little bag of dry ice, it was, no doubt, ordered within the past couple of days. I suppose it is the thought that counts, and I should be thankful she sent me anything. Except what I am counting is the lack of thought, or maybe just the afterthought.

This is the card I would like to send:

Only it would be lost on her.

My mother sent me a box of meat. Omaha steaks, to be exact. The gift included, in addition to some fabulous dry ice that my husband no doubt will play with after dinner, four (4) steaks, four (4) chicken breasts, four (4) burgers, eight (8) hot dogs, and four (4) stuffed baked potatoes. It’s a generous gift, I suppose. I spent a good twenty minutes researching their website to find the value of the meaty gift assortment, and I couldn’t find this particular grouping, which makes me think she selected the items individually to make her own package. Or perhaps there was a coupon in the Sunday paper that isn’t reflected on the website. Maybe Costco had a special. Regardless, I got a box of meat, mostly red, to enjoy with my family.

This would be a good time to tell you that I don’t eat red meat.

I shouldn’t have to tell my mother I don’t eat red meat, because she knows. Or she used to know. Most likely she forgot, and in her defense, she does have some pretty significant memory problems.  Really, though, that doesn’t matter so much as the part where she decided that was the gift she wanted to give me, her daughter. I am not a big meat eater, nor have I ever been. I am also not hungry, like millions of Americans who do not have enough to eat and would be thrilled to receive a box of meat. I can afford to buy food for myself and my family, food that we actually want to eat.

But seriously, who gives their daughter the gift of meat? If you don’t know what to get someone, or you don’t want to put a lot of time and energy into gift giving, do you consider meat your default? What are you, a butcher?

When I was a pre-teen, which is what kids were called before they came up with tween, my mother also did not eat red meat. She gave up her extra rare London broil about the same time she gave up cigarettes, two healthy habits that lasted until about three or four years ago, which means for a good thirty years. I remember one time after my mom stopped eating red meat, my grandmother invited us over for dinner. She had made a big pot of meaty chili, and my mother had a conniption fit. How dare her own mother forget she no longer ate beef?  If memory serves me correctly, she screamed and stomped around like a two year old. What was she supposed to eat? Didn’t my grandmother think of anyone but herself? Couldn’t she for once support my mother in anything she tried to do? I wish my grandmother had told her to just eat the beans out of the chili. That would have been funny. Instead, my grandmother didn't have us over to dinner for a long time, because who needs that kind of abuse?

Blogging about my mother giving me a box of red meat isn’t the equivalent of having a temper tantrum. I can use the chicken. I can feed the rest to my husband or some friends or a pack of wild dogs. It will not go to waste.

Honestly, when my children received checks in the mail last Friday, and still over a week after Christmas, I was taken aback. Where was my check? My mother didn’t send anything to me? Did she forget about me, or was that a subtle fuck you?  

I didn't forget about her. In fact, I sent her gift early, so there was no doubt I planned on getting her a present. Hell, I even sent her something I knew she would like, because I thought about her, and thinking about my mother isn’t something I enjoy doing.

It feels good to know she didn’t forget about me. My sisters still haven’t received anything, although I am sure their steaks will be there tomorrow. One of my sisters also doesn’t eat red meat, so I know she is looking forward to her gift. And my other sister doesn’t want to eat meat of unknown and dubious origin or quality. Just because it came in the mail doesn’t make it safe or healthy or ethical.

Whatever. At least it wasn’t another box of flowers that I have to arrange myself. Besides, that’s my birthday present.

I am not really upset, more just amused. I gave birth to you. Now we don’t talk much.  Here’s some meat. I wonder what she gives to people she likes. I also wonder if there are any such people.

I love my daughters, and I am pretty sure they love me too. I have promised them no matter what happens in life, no matter if we get along or don’t, I will never send them mail order meat for Christmas.

Sticks and Stones

Kids. They say the darndest things. I don’t mean when they are little and mix up the letters in “spaghetti” or shorten “fire truck” down to the first and last three letters. Those little kid words are charming and adorable, but my kids are older now. Their vocabularies and abilities to wound you to your very core are very advanced compared to the naïve three year old. Here’re a few of my personal favorites I’ve been trying to store in my long term memory in case I need them for blackmail purposes later on in life.

Most moms get to experience the joy of their teenager saying “I hate you” at some point during the adolescent years. My teen is more specific than that. A year or so ago, she said to me,” You suck all the fun out of life.” That’s a pretty precise response to my asking her to do something as banal as make her bed or put her shoes away, don’t you think? Over the holiday break, she told me that “I am an awful person.” This one might have been in response to me telling her to put on a jacket or that she couldn’t have any more soda. Hitler was an awful person.  Genghis Khan was an awful person. Ted Bundy was an awful person, even if attractive, charismatic, and misunderstood. Seriously, am I really as bad as Attila the Hun?

My younger daughter has also said some pretty terrible things to me, but less about me as a person and more about my physical characteristics. Hers weren’t meant to be hurtful, more just descriptive to a fault. When she was younger and I cared less about being naked in front of her, she spent a long time studying my breasts before she said to me, “Your nipples look like the ends of hot dogs.” I should have told her it was all her fault for not weaning like a regular baby, but instead I went in the bathroom and locked the door, then sat down to have a little cry. I’m sure she meant that as a compliment, as she still loves hot dogs to this day, but I can’t look at a package of franks without feeling a kindred spirit with them, and also a hefty dose of self-loathing.

More recently, she put her hand on my belly and told me she loved it because it reminded her of a water bed, the way it rolled and squished. And she meant it as a compliment. In fact, she still didn’t understand how that could have hurt my feelings, even after my husband and other daughter went on and on about why it was such a horrible thing to say about my flabby abdomen despite hours spent at the gym.

 Yes, that’s me. Hot dog nippled and waterbed bellied, a fun-hating terrible excuse for a human. Is there any wonder why I have self-esteem issues? Here I am trying to build up my children, while at the same time, they are tearing me down.

 And no, this is not retribution for how I treated my mother as a child, because she deserved it.