My day....

[new2ride]

My mom didn't share too much of anything with me. She came from an era where sex was tabu, ladies never talked about such things.

The one thing that sticks out in my mind is when I had my first period. I think I was something like 10 years and had absolutely no idea what had happened. I was scared beyond what anyone should be - I couldn't even bring myself to tell my mom what was going on. I kept thinking to myself what have I done to cause this (I was such a worry wart). I waited an entire day before telling my mom. All my mother did was go into her lingerie drawer, pulled out this sanitary belt, along with a few napkins and handed them to me. I don't even think Tampax was an option at the time. The next words were "now you can have babies." I was so dumbfounded by this I didn't know what to think.

All I can say is thank goodness for libraries. I spent all my free time in the library learning about what the menstural cycle was. I also learned about puberty and everything else a teenager experiences. I can't say our health classes focused on any of this -- I think the school was more concerned about telling us about syphyllis, herpes, etc., and how contracting any of these STDs would ruin your life.

[bmccasland]

Girl Scouts saved me. Was on a group camping trip, although we were "camping" inside some sort of buildling. There was my troop (Cadettes) and some older girls (Senior Scouts), and one of them recognized what I hadn't yet noticed. She took me to the bathroom had me change out my panties, loaned me some pads, and wash my PJ bottoms. Then kept me stocked the rest of the weekend. I knew what a period was, just didn't know the signs that it was about to happen.

Seems years later when I worked at a GS camp, we always had a couple of girls having their first period, at camp. Some were clueless, which was loads of fun. But at least this was in the pre-PC / overprotective parent days, so we could explain 1/2 of the birds and the bees to the girl and not have the parents all over us for up-surping their parental prerogative.