How Did Your Mom Mess Up This Conversation

It happens to all girls. Eventually we "become a woman" and have to put up with a monthly visitor. My mom didn't handle this talk well and neither did these moms.

I was in 6th grade and having a slumber party at my house when I started my period. I honestly didn't know what was happening to me. I, of course, knew girls got their period, I just thought it would be different.

I raced upstairs to tell my mom and she gets all awkward and weird because my older sister hadn't even started yet. She handed me a box of pads and said, "Use these until I tell you that you can use a tampon."

Confused, I said, "When? Isn't it over?"

She replies, " No Kate. This happens every month for 7 days and for a long long time." I was in shock. This happens each month?! And for 7 days! I thought it was a one time thing! Then my mom went into her room. We laugh about it now. She admits she was in complete denial and didn't want to think about her 11 year old daughter starting her period.

CafeMom had some other great botched conversations regarding the arrival of Aunt Flo...
1. "She took some ketchup, squirted it on a pad, and told me that's what my period would look like. Like most girls, my first one was more brown than red, so I thought I had just pooped my pants for a week. It was mortifying in its own way."
2. "She gave me a box of Tampax, the instructions that came with the tampons, a protractor, and sent me to the bathroom. I had to figure out how to put it in at a 45-degree angle while she waited outside the door."
3. "We sat on my bed, she refused to look me in the eyes, and then told me that a 'hole opened up' in my body, by my 'pee hole' and would squirt out blood. I asked her if blood would shoot out of me, like a rocket, and lift me off the ground. My mom laughed and said, 'yes!' That was not the time for sarcasm."