Ok, so technically I should have posted this a few days ago when it happened, but I’m lazy and haven’t found the time to get around to it till now, so you’ll just have to suck it up and deal with it.
There. Doesn’t that feel better? Good.
Remember how in the last teenage angsty blog post I ranted about a girl that liked me at the Young Men’s Christian Association? Well, I’ve got a story to tell, and it’s dedicated to Hannah and all the little girls out there that are like her.
A note to Hannah: Should you at some point in your life discover the wonders of Google and find this blog post, I beg your forgiveness and ask that you do not sue my pants off. Heaven knows that I need those almost as much as Pee Wee Hermin needed a stiff drink during his big adventure. Almost, but not quite.
Tuesdays at the YMCA can be a little bit troubling. Mondays and Thursdays are swim days, and Wednesday is typically a field trip day, which means that Tuesdays and Fridays are typically spent hanging out in the cafeteria and trying to find creative ways to pass the time. Sure, we can always send someone outside to play kickball or watch Matilda for the twelfth-hundredth time, but sometimes we simply have the creative capacity of the common housefly. You see, houseflies have a tendency to fly around looking for something to eat and digest. Having an average lifespan of only 24 hours, they don’t really care what they get their grimy little hands on. Often known to land on a pile of dog dung and then puke on it in order to soften up the material some before eating it (that literally is how houseflies eat, by the way), they live their pointless lives in search of the next big crappy find.
What this has to do with how we are as creative as a fly, I have no idea. In fact, this entire past paragraph has been a whole lot of filler. Perhaps you have forgotten it, but the title of this blog post is Of Tampons and Milk Cartons, and I do fully intend to get to them some point or another. Patience, young padawan. Patience.
So basically, my point is that at some point or another, there will be times where there is not something for everyone to be doing. So kids do what one would expect them to do. They go to the bathroom and stand on toilets, or go to the bathroom and play kickball, or go to the bathroom and scream “Whiddle diddle conny frong pong long diddy daddy poo,” or, in the case of some, go to the bathroom and remove used tampons from their trash bin so that they can be reused for bigger and better things. The story I’m about to tell falls into the last category of things kids do when grown ups aren’t watching.
Now, while I wasn’t actually there to see this, I was fortunate enough to see the write up that the child received for her dreadful actions. Basically what happened is that I walked into the break room to consult a peer about making a write up for a child that had intentionally stomped on a milk carton producing an explosion of great magnitude. Just picture this scene in your mind for a moment:
You sit watching SpongeBob SquarePants and friends on the moving pictures box, and out of the corner of your eye notice a blonde haired blue eyed boy jump into the air in slow motion. He has a look of great glee on his face, because he knows that he is about to do something really stupid. The dumber something is, the greater the look of glee one will see in the eyes of a child while they are doing it. There is a very large look of glee on this young boy’s face. You watch as gravity begins to take its toll on this young sprite, and cringe as you see his feet begin to close in on the square, cardboard box that is a milk carton. It is filled with an entire quart of the liquid that is about to expose itself to God’s green earth in a manner most unpleasant and unexpected by the poor cow that was exploited for the fruit of its ample teets. The corner of the boy’s shoe touches the milk carton, and the milk begins to gush out onto the cafeteria floor. In a sudden display of grandeur, the milk and its container part company as the boy shakes his head in enjoyment of this moment he wishes would never end. With a final burst of milk, the moment is over, but the memories have been created. They will last a lifetime for this fortunate young child.
He is about to be punished.
Wow. Wasn’t that beautiful? Now you have a picture of everyday life at the Y. Stories such as this are commonplace, and you get to experience them first hand while actually getting paid
minimum wage! How great a deal is that?
At any rate, I really should get back to the tampon story. I walk into the room to consult about the write up with a friend, and a counselor friend of mine offers me a piece of paper upon which another write up has been written in a form consistent with that of most write ups that are written in the written form that write ups must be written in. In the most politically correct language that could possibly be written, I read the story that I am about to narrate to you, much in the same fashion that the earlier one was written. Ok, here goes:
Picture yourself in an elegant gourmet school cafeteria, filled with the most excellent of benches and tables. Upon each table lies a Smuckers™ Uncrustables™ Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwhich. Upon each bench, an eager child awaiting lunch. There are no messes in this gourmet cafeteria. There are only expectant children just waiting for the command to begin dining on their elegant one course meals. Each child is waiting for the return of but one girl, a young lass of blonde hair and rather annoying tendancies. Little do they know that that one girl is in the bathroom getting a drink.
Now, imagine that you are the little girl. You have just finished using the restroom and have ensured that you are leaving the bathroom spic and span. You remove a tampon from the waste recepticle and think, “Wow. This would make an excellent water container. If only it weren’t for that darned blood on it. Oh well, I suppose we’ll just have to make do!”
You walk up to the sink, wash the blood off (wouldn’t want that blood to make you sick, now, would you?) and proceed to soak the tampon with water. Boy, those other boys and girls will envy your brilliance in just a few minutes when they have to drink healthy things such as milk from a cow’s ample teets or juice of apple, created with the juice of fresh picked apples from the great city of South America. You’ll have water! Sure, it will be mixed in with a small dosage of blood from some unknown person’s period, but that’s of little concern in the long run. You’ve cleaned off that dirty blood. The concept of germs and viruses and bacteria (Oh, my!) doesn’t apply to children, really, does it? Nah. Mom just told you not to ingest blood because she’s a worry wuss. Always concerned about silly, unimportant things like tofu and breaded pudding. Pfft. What does she know, anyway? You open the door of the bathroom, proceed to your seat, all the while subtly hiding your trophy. You will derive great satisfaction from this tampon and the water it has been able to store. You press your mouth against the tampon and suck up the lovely blood tainted water. Hah! You can barely even taste the blood! Mom’s so silly. I wish she would just go away and eat bing cherries or participate in a wet T-Shirt contest of some sort. As you taste the lovely water, a camp counselor walks up to you and confronts you about the tampon.
“Great,” you think. “I bet she’ll want to drink some of my water.”
Sure enough, the counselor grabs the tampon with one swift stroke and holds it as one would hold something that could kill you.
“It’s just a tampon, Miss Counselor!” you stand up and protest. “I washed it off!”
And then, as if Miss Counselor was the teacher from Charlie Brown, she goes “Wah wah wah wah, wah wah.”
You begin to cry and insist that it was ok. “Why are you so mean? All you do is take away our fun! Our parents pay for us to go here! Why should you take away the tampons that provide us with such great satisfaction and personal fulfillment?! It simply isn’t ethical! If I were ten years older, I’d take this to court! And I’d win too! There are some rockin’ attorneys out there, I kid you not!” You begin to realize that to protest more is only going to be in vain. The counselor is not going to budge in her decision. You stop wagging your tail, and sit down again to try and make the best of your loss, all the while nibbling at your Smuckers™ Uncrustables™ Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwhich. It’s hardly any help, though. Peanut butter is a sore substitute for your life blood: water.
Wow. That was moving, wasn’t it? It helps even me to see these things from the eyes of a child sometimes. I get so wrapped up in my counselorness that I fail to realize what it is like to be a child, stupid and naive about Tampons and Milk Cartons. It is not I that have taught the kids, it is the kids that have taught me. And so I leave you with this final bit of food for thought:
Wouldn’t it be
awesome if they packaged milk in cardboard tampons?
