Poetry Friday Retro-Repro

Mona deems the theme to be Human Reproduction because Boy-Child is about to embrace this as part of the school curriculum. Poor teachers! They must be ready for either all that snickering or an extremely uncharacteristically quiet classroom!
I've only addressed one small aspect of this huge topic because once I started writing, the memories came "flooding" (hehehe!) back in so much detail, I had to do them justice and devote to them the words they deserved!



Uncovered On The Covered Wagon Trip!

I knew I'd get my period some day. Not that my mom actually talked directly to me about what it was. She had just issued a really lame book about it to my oldest sister,who then passed it on to my next oldest sister, who talked to me and showed me what to do when it happened. And, man did it happen!

I was at Bible Camp the summer of Gr. 7 (12 years old) and I couldn't wait to go on the overnight trip. I had heard all about the covered wagon trip the senior girls got to go on and I was excited. This feeling quickly dissipated when I watched two old roan-coloured nags plod slowly up the road into camp....and the driver was worse.

This ancient-looking geezer was by far the crookedest and skinniest man I'd ever laid eyes on as he somehow got himself down out of the driver's seat. I thought he was going to keel over any minute!
Ed, as he was called, had one long yellow tooth and his brief conversations were punctuated with a staccato of spitting tobacco juice on the path. All the kids jumped out of the way.

We loaded our duffel bags and took hours to ramble and rock over the rough roads to a ramshackle farm where we were to sleep in the hayloft. We actually had a great foil-wrapped meal of chicken, potatoes, onions and carrots cooked over an open fire. After the singsong and the customary s'mores, we all had to pee on the hillside and we were given one tissue each for the process. My cabin mate shone a flashlight for me and I gasped when I saw it! A watery red stain! Crap! Of all the places to get initiated into womanhood! I thought I'd have to use leaves or moss like the Native women.

My counsellor rationed me a few more tissues and somehow I made it back to the camp the next day none too worse for my first experience with The Curse. I immediately went to announce my whole ordeal to my sister whose tent was in the older girls' section. I think I recall her giving me some proper supplies, or maybe it was her counsellor, but I know I was grateful.

That seems like such a distant memory now as I look from the other side of my life, no longer getting The Curse at all. I don't miss it one bit.....but I do think of that episode every time I see a wagon hitched with some old horses and some spit hurling out of someone in the driver's seat!

Mother of Invention, reflecting and smiling at one of my life's pivotal moments!