Tampon Rodeo

I had gone camping with a friend, my mother, and her friend. She happened to bring along her 2 sons– a 4 year old and an infant – whoa, whoa, whoa. My friend and I tried to stay away from that mood killer as much as possible. It’s not that I didn’t like all children when I was in high school, but this toddler was exceptionally annoying and out-of-control. There wasn’t any room for us in the trailer anyway, so we stayed out in the tent and only really went inside for food and toilet breaks.

So there is always one thing you really don’t want to have when you go camping... your period. If that Mother Nature woman from that stupid commercial appeared, I would have taken great joy in bitch-slapping her right across her smug face. There weren’t any guys around or anything; it was just the simple inconvenience of it. I hated not being able to flush my tampon – so gross! Turns out, I had an even stronger argument for that factor after that weekend.

After I had done my afternoon routine in the bathroom, including tampon re-fresh, it was time for the 4 year old to have his bath. His mother began running the water and undressing the kid when her infant son required a bit of her attention. No more than 1 minute could have lapsed from that moment to when she had returned to her eldest son in the bathroom. He had not only gotten into the garbage and discovered my dirty tampon, but he must have dunked it into his bath and then proceeded to twirl it around like a rodeo cowboy. He seemed to be pretty impressed with his work as well. The entire bathroom, including the kid, looked like a horrific murder scene from CSI. The still-running bath had a thick marbled effect of blood spreading like a disease throughout the tub. The shower curtain, mirror, sink, window, toilet, towels, floor and every wall was splattered – as if the entire room was just decorated by Jackson Pollock.

It was totally disgusting, not to mention humiliating. It was even my own blood and I could barely keep my lunch down when I saw what that little shit had done. My mother was the one that did most of the cleaning up, bless her! I was never so grateful for ugly wallpapered walls than I was that day; it wiped off fairly easy. If it had been painted dry-wall, we probably would have had to re-paint the room!

That ghastly visual will be forever etched in my mind. If I am ever somewhere that I cannot flush my tampon, I get a flash of that scene and I gag every time. My anxiety level rises while I am forced to mummify the damn thing in toilet paper and hide it deep within the garbage.