The Talk

I spent Thursday morning hormonally angsting about how I thought Tinker, Tailor was coming out on the 9th (i.e. yesterday) when in fact it's coming out on the 16th (a week from yesterday). Throughout the whole drive to work I attempted to explain to myself that I was not really as upset as I felt, but sometimes the mind and the body are painfully difficult to separate. Arrival at work brought some relief, as I spent the first few hours chatting with M, the teacher I work with the most, and eating the extra garlic bread the kitchen had prepared. Then I went on walkover to get the kids at school, returned to the Center and then, mid-thawing out, was frogmarched along with the girls in the class into the next room.

It was in this state that I was prevailed upon to give a portion of The Talk.

No, thank God, not that portion of The Talk, but another more simply biological one about which, and in order to keep this blog as friendly as possible for my diverse audience members, I will insert a warning here:

YES, I AM ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT IT. IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH, LEAVE NOW AND COME BACK WHEN I ONCE AGAIN START TALKING GUNSHOTS AND SOCIETY. YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ IT, BUT THIS IS TRAGIC/HILARIOUS AND HAS TO BE RECORDED FOR ALL TIME.

All right. For those of you still with me, this is what happened: after the Wednesday discovery of a cleanliness problem in the women's bathroom during the evening Youth Program and subsequent lecture all the girls endured, it was proposed that the same thing could easily happen with our School Age classroom. Thus it came to pass that, once we were next door and safely cocooned from male ears, M said, "Does everyone know what a period is?"

I remember at that age hardly being able to think the words without blushing bright red and fighting an urge to flee the room. Yet, all these girls nodded calmly, and a few even raised their hands to comment. Okay, okay, I thought, so what if I have always had libertine ideals and a puritanical gut; the teacher version of myself is calm, cool, and collected and, indeed, tough. So at certain points in the subsequent conversation I chimed in. That's when the inner conflict really began.

I have told many people that every comment I make to the kids represents in varying portions actual me, ideal me, and teacher me. The example I always give when they ask me what I mean is this:

Student: Miss [my first name], you look so pretty and skinny!
Me, first reaction: Thank you!
Still me, only the teacher takes over: Not that you have to be skinny to be pretty.
Ideal me, finally kicking into gear: Or that appearance is the most important thing about you, because it's not.
And then, finally, while the student just stand there more and more confused: You look very nice today too!

It's hard to be a person and an adult and a role model all at the same time.

It's even harder when you're talking about sometime as personal as a menstrual cycle. I flatter myself that the teacher version of me carried the day, but it was touch and go for a few minutes there. For instance, balancing, "It's perfectly natural!" with, "But it's really, really gross, so clean up after yourself. Ew," and "It's nothing to be ashamed of," with, "But you probably shouldn't tell boys, or even girls you don't trust, because you're going to get mocked." Also, "It's going to be fine," and "Accidents happen," really kept the party going. At some point I think I said, "Some people break out, some people get cramps, some people get really angry, and some people are perfectly fine." (And some people, I suppose, fight back tears over not being able to see a movie that already exists of a book that it already perfect.) The reality of preteen existence never, ever resembles any kind of ideal world, but I think that M and I did help to clear a few things up.

Then M left the room, and some girl asked how you put a pad in your underpants. So I did what anyone would do. Not betraying my calm at all, I moseyed over to the DO NOT REMOVE box, opened it up, pulled out a pair of underpants and a pad and asked for an assistant. I asked my assistant to hold the underpants up with her arms and then commenced a monologue I probably should have recorded for posterity. (Halfway through I wondered, how is this my life?) I believe it went something like this:

"All right. So you're sitting on the toilet and your underpants are, you know, in front of you. So you take this and you pull it open and you throw these parts away because you're going to use the wrapper on the next one to roll it up and you put this up there and you smooth it down the rest of the way like this. And, oh look, this one has wings. So we'll detach this and fold these under like that and voila! [<--that part is verbatim; I have no idea what I look like to them] So when you take it off you pull right here and the wings should come too and you roll it from the top or I guess some people fold and you use the wrapper from the replacement to cover it all up. Only sometimes the edges are still peeking out and that's when the toilet paper comes in. And you throw it away in that metal box or, if there's no bag in it, the regular trash can. Got it?"

"My cousin says there's another thing you can use..." began one of the younger girls.

Oh Lord. Ideal me ran for the hills. "Ask your mom."