Ugh . . . Puberty!

The other day, I was directing a rehearsal, and I overheard one of my young actors exclaim, "I’m shaking!"

"Are you nervous about being off book?" I asked her, realizing, in hindsight, the naïvety in this question.

"No," the other girls and boys started chiming in, "We have puberty class next week. And . . . we have to learn about . . . the other one . . . you know?"

"You know . . . the other . . ." they kept saying, widening their eyes.

"The boys have to learn about the girls, and the girls have to learn about the boys," I translated.

Thanks to whomever, by the way, for having puberty class the week before our musical.

"It will be fine," I assured the kids. "We all went through it and survived."

Secretly I thought, "And I'm glad I don't have to go through that again."

Trigger warning: Unenlightened men and prudish women, plug your ears.

I started my period early. I was eleven years old, and we had only been living in Idaho for a few months. I was already the nerdy freckle-faced girl who wore glasses that were two inches thick. And I had to deal with a period on top of all that?

I missed the puberty talk in Ohio and arrived right after the one in Idaho, but I had already learned about it from reading Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret and Deenie umpteen times. Several well-meaning girls from my new 5th grade class gave me a copy of the puberty book they had received a few weeks earlier. Apparently, I was the only one who really needed it.

Oh, and I learned about puberty from my neurotic mother, a woman who never wore tampons because she thought TSS was inevitable, and you even could die from taking one out of the package.

She also taught me to be thankful that I didn't have to wear the old 1950s maxi pads with belts. For that, I was thankful.

I was a dancer though, and I got tired of wearing pads under my leotard. So in 9th grade (I wish I had done it sooner), I locked myself in the bathroom with a mirror and figured out how to wear a tampon.

I came out crying, not because I was hurt, but because I was emotional from the gravity of it all.

My husband, Dan, laughed when I told him this story.

"That doesn't sound like you at all," he said, his tone of voice making it clear that it sounded exactly like me.

"I'm a woman now!" I proclaimed tearfully to my mother and anyone else in earshot of the bathroom.

My mother called our family doctor and asked her advice on how to prevent TSS.

Her advice was simple, "Just change the tampon every six to eight hours or so and wipe well."

I'm sure those kids will be fine in puberty class, but I am glad I'm done with it.

Or am I . . . ?

I have decided I need a puberty class on the years leading up to menopause. There is some weird hormonal shit happening to my body now that I'm in my 40s, and nobody has offered to teach a class on that.

I take that back. WebMd has a lot to say on the subject, but 50% of the time, it ends in death.

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