Basement Kid Dot Com

Let me ask you all a lil' somethin' somethin'...

Do you recall how many dumb-ass repeated phrases you have said in your life?

For example: You say something that can be considered a double-entendre, like, "...It was so big I could not even fit it in my mouth," to which some unoriginal asshole replies, "...That's what she said!"--- I mean, why is it always a 'she', like who is 'she'?  'She' must be a really dirty slut to be saying all of this crap.  Why not a 'he'?  Gay men see a lot more action these days than anybody straight. Perhaps the carpet-munchers do as well.  Les-bian-nest!!!!

Anyway, what I am getting at is that we all have certain phrases that we use with certain friends and/or family at certain times in our lives.  My two sisters and I, and even some of our friends, use the phrase, "...Welp," which is essentially the same meaning as the phrase, "...Well," but through silliness and having different meanings, it became what it is now.  And it is usually said with a shoulder shrug and followed by another stupid phrase, like, "Welp, this is as good as it's gunna get."  

I gone through many of these sort-of inside joke phrases with the people around me.  Why, when I was around eleven, I remember BooBoo, Moose and I would get teased and pushed around a lot by the 'popular crowd' and we decided, like idiots, that a clever comeback was to say, "Go fart on a cow!"  To us, that meant, "Go fuck yourself."  However, our coolness factor would only allow us to repeat this stupid phrase as a comeback.

In the summer of 2009,  I decided that it was cool to add the phrase, "Dot Com," after everything that anyone would say.  Usually, they would have to be short phrases or sayings for me to bless it with a "Dot Com," but nonetheless, the fact that I thought that it was baller in any sort of way, makes it not baller, in general.  

Matzah and I would be having an intelligent conversation where she would say something like, "And, I said to him, 'I don't think so'..." and then I would agree and add, "Dot Com."  Eventually, when "Dot Com" started to get old, I would add more to it, until it got ridiculous.

Example:  Matzah: "He put his arms around me..." Danny: "Dot Com slash Awkward slash EEEWW slash I would have punched him in the dick." ---Yeah, it got real annoying, even to myself.  I wished I could stop.

In May of 2009, we were approaching Matzah's 21st Birthday.  My birthday was only a short month after hers, so we were anticipating this particular summer to be phenomenal!  Since most of our friends, at that point in time, were younger than us, there were only four people at her 21st Birthday.  Two of them, including me, were still technically under age when I made my sister's ex-boyfriend/ bouncer of the bar/club Twenty in Stamford let us all in.

It was me, Matzah, Matzah's best friend growing up--- *ThisJew, and one of my friends from high school, *Basement Kid.  Basement Kid and Matzah were friends, but not very close, seeing as they had only met once or twice before, but they enjoyed each other's company enough to spend time with one another on occasion.

This story is all about Basement Kid on Matzah's 21st Birthday.

The night started out with the four of us walking to Twenty in our best dressed.  Basement kid was being particularly kind when he decided to buy most of the drinks that night, including Matzah's infamous Blue Long Island Iced Tea.  In said Iced Tea, there were about four different kinds of liquor with barely anything else to dilute it.  It was in a tall, wide glass with some ice and it was glowing blue.  Real Healthy, I'm sure.

She started drinking this after we all swallowed two jello shots, like champs.  I was now drinking a large cocktail and so were the other two.  Matzah cringed every time she swallowed a sip of this her big-ass drink and kept saying, "I hate you guys!" To which I had to reply, "Dot Com." Even when drunk,  I still could not stand my own phrase.

Cut to a half hour later,  we are all shakin' our thangs on the dance floor like we were gettin' paid for it.  Matzah was successfully 21st Birthday drunk by the end of the night.  ThisJew was the responsible one who stopped drinking earlier in order to drive us home later that night.  So, as she is driving us the 10 blocks from the bar to Matzah's house, she gets stopped by the police, who are doing a sobriety check.  They ask her if she has had anything to drink on this night and she says no.  Clearly, Basement Kid and I are smashed in the back seat as we continue to sing and chant Britney Spears lyrics like it's second nature.  Matzah is in the front passenger seat, looking back at us, laughing her ass off.  Luckily, the policeman did not ask questions to ThisJew and let her pass.  

Pretty soon, Matzah, Basment Kid and I are sitting on the couches in Matzah's basement.  Matzah kept mentioning to us to keep it down because she has younger siblings, who she did not want to wake up.  Now, Basement Kid has always had this dry, sharp sense of humor.  It's like he always has something to say back immediately after a dumb comment is said.  

He kept asking me, "what is with the 'dot com'?"  

And I would just say, "I don't know, you just have to embrace it, I can't stop!"  So we started to laugh about it and pretty soon into the night, he was using it as well.  Success?

Matzah fell asleep with her clothes and shoes still on with her legs hanging off of the couch.  Her mouth was wide open as she breathed the sweet basement air.  Basement Kid and I stayed up for another hour, talking about life and other shit when he stops me in the middle of my sentence and says, 

"Hold on,  I will be right back, I have to use the bathroom."  He walks upstairs, which I found odd because there was definitely a bathroom down where we were.  He must not have seen it, I thought.

About fifteen minutes pass and Basement Kid is still upstairs.  This is when I started to worry.  Shit, did he pass out?  That would not be easy to explain to Matzah's mother and siblings in the morning.  I'd better go check on him.  Maybe he is sick in the bathroom upstairs?

What I found was more than I expected...

As I near the top of the steps, I see that it is dark with a little bit of light coming from the kitchen on the left.  I whisper his name, "S**?" and get no response.  As I finally reach the top step, I look towards where the light is coming from...the refrigerator.  He was nomming upon everything that was in the vicinity of his mouth and hands.  One hand was dipped deep down into the leftover mac and cheese while the other finger was being slurped in his mouth.  Basement Kid had the double doors of the freezer and the fridge wide open and the light was shining out past him, creating a halo around his entire figure.  He was pigging out so hard in my Jew's fridge.  

"S**!!!" I whisper-yelled towards him, "What the fuck?" 

Our eyes met for a split second when I had realized I'd scared the shit out of him.  He snarfed his food and somehow ended up spitting everything he had in his mouth (mind you, he looked like a hamster when I got up there) all over the contents in the fridge.  Chewed-up food EVERYWHERE!  The situation was taken to another level when we both realized that I caught him red-handed, eating out of a family's fridge that he barely new.  He did not ask anyone if it was okay.  He was a sneaky, little rat about it.  And he knew it.  

It took us about thirteen minutes to stop laughing in the dark kitchen of the Jew family.  There was a point in which I was rolling on the floor, holding my stomach from painful laughter.  Basement Kid was holding onto the counter, keeled over in agony.  The worst part was that we could not laugh out loud to get it out.  We had to laugh silently due to the fact that there was a family sleeping upstairs.  Both of our eyes had tears streaming out of them down to our necks.  

We finally calmed down, while I tried to clean up the mess he was starting to make.  We eventually made our way back into the basement and fell asleep.  The next morning, Matzah woke up with a raging headache saying, "Never again with the blue shit..."

Of course, "Dot Com" was followed. She ignored it, like she was training herself to do so when Basement Kid added, 

"So, like, what if your little siblings had come down here while we were all down here.  Like, they know her (me) but they have no idea who I am, they'd be like, 'Oh, hey...um... Basement Kid." (If you cannot decipher it on your own, this is where his name comes from) 

To which I then replied, "Dot Com" again.  Like, SHUT UP!

"HAHA! BasementKid.com!" He laughed.  It was nice to have someone laugh at my fucking stupid phrase.  I barely laughed at it anymore because I was annoying myself to death with it.

To this day, I consider that night to be one of the top-ten most hilarious nights I have ever experienced.  There are times when laughter feels good and refreshing, but this laughter was painful and wretched.  My abs were throttled by it for days and it actually really hurt to smile for about 48 hours after the event took place.  The only thing that made it even worse, in the morning, was when Matzah went to retrieve a piece of chocolate babka bread for breakfast and there were Wolverine claw marks in it.  Apparently, Basement Kid decided to taste-test said bread as well during his binge.  Who knows what else he tore through before I got up there.  The three of us looked at the scraped marks in the bread and her and I turned to him and said, 

"Really?"  He could not do anything but laugh with a painful look upon his face.  

"Yeah, I guess I got to that too..." He snickered.

"I mean..." Matzah said.

"I mean..." is another annoying phrase that has lasted since the summer of 2008 and all of my friends still use it to this day.  I know that we sound uneducated when we say it, like slampigs, but it is so easy to replace dead air with that phrase.  This one will never die.  

"Dot Com" eventually met its end when I realized I was saying it in my head at an job interview for a random boutique I was applying for.  I wanted to say it after everything this woman was telling me.  I made a conscious effort to exile the phrase out of my vocabulary and only use it appropriately from then on.  

It was hard to do, but I did it.

...That's what she said.  Dot Com.

Just Dance. Gunna Be Okay?

Most of the time, I think that I know what I am talking about.  Most of the time,  I think that what I am doing, in that moment, is prepared and well-thought out.  Most of the time,  I can justify my actions.


This is not one of those times.


'Twas a brisk Spring day in May of 2011 when I sat down at a computer in the the library of WCSU.  I opened up my email and noticed I had received a message from my father's sister, aka my aunt. Basically, she had written me to ask if I would house/ dogsit for her while she and her husband brought my cousin to Disney World in August.  I agreed.  I mean, who doesn't need want $300 for sitting around?


Come August, I drive my jeep out to Long Island and find myself utterly bored and alone in this quaint, suburban area.  There was only so much shopping, at an expensive mall, that I could do in four days without spending all of my hard-earned cash.  I would cook meals that took some time to make.  Let the dogs out at their designated times.  I know I watched a Millionaire Matchmaker marathon...twice.  So, you see, boys and girls, the boredom became immense.  Even the sound of my own voice got boring, and that never happens.


Day 2 started becoming even more mundane than the previous day and this is when I started to talk to myself.  Not just little phrases here and there, no no.  I mean full-on conversations.  When I got bored of conversing to myself, I started talking to the German Shepard, who literally did not care.  However, I found the bear-sized shape of his head quite entertaining for, like... another fifteen seconds.


That is when it hit me.  Not only would this brand new idea coerce me to leave the house, but it was cheap and legal.  In reality, my idea-of-fun does not have to have even one of those qualities, but if one, or both, are part of the equation, I'm fuckin' down like a clown at a ginger's birthday party.  What is this brilliant idea you ask?


Wine, Bitch.  Wine.  Pinot Grigio, to be Frank.  Who is Frank?


When I got back from the liquor store, it took me a half an hour to locate a wine opener in my aunt's house.  I started to panic and curse out loud.  If I had to leave and go buy a wine opener, I would have, because there was no way I was enduring another sober night here when I had two more days to go.  Fuck, no!  Luckily, I dug through every kitchen drawer with vigor until I found one.  Eureka! (not just a vacuum brand, guys)


Happy hour for me started at 3pm that afternoon.  I had made myself and omelette and started off drinking the wine in a proper wine glass with my food. Two glasses later: I was buzzed and thought I was finished with my wine, so I washed the glass and placed it back where I had originally found it.  A half hour went by and I was still bored out of my skull.  I did not want to dirty that glass again, so I decided to use a solo cup.  Eventually, I was neglecting cups altogether and chugging the bottle like it was teat nectar.  Before I knew it, over half of the bottle was housed.


Let me explain that this was not an average bottle of wine.  This was one of those bottles that you buy so you can drink wine over the course two weeks between one or two persons.  I justified that drinking alone was okay when you were this bored.  Smart.


Soon enough, I was blasting Lady Gaga at top-volume with the bottle of wine as my microphone.  I remember thinking it would be a sweet invention if you could make a wine glass into a microphone and still be able to drink out of it.  Then, I said to myself that this invention will be my claim to fame when I am a world-renowned recording artist.  So, now it was time to sing to myself in the mirror since I was going to be famous.  I did this for about twenty-minutes until it was time to break it down and dance.  Gunna be okay???


Of course, within this short duration of time that I was shit-faced and alone, my ex-boyfriend decides whilst he is drunk and alone that it would be fuckin' sweet to text me.  I gave in because of initial curiosity to see what he wanted and because I was so down to drunk-text anyone at that moment.  It was not until about fifteen minutes later that I had realized exactly what I was doing.  If I was sober, I would have never entertained such a conversation.  There was nothing immensely offending said within the texts, but we started talking about my breastial-region, for God-knows what reason.  That is when I decided to stop the conversation and start crying about how much I could not stand that he was communicating with me.  Oh, dear.  Pandora's box just exploded.


Drunkenly, I called everyone that I know who knows the situation between my ex-boyfriend and me.  I was sobbing on the phone for an hour with several people.  When I looked into the mirror, I looked like a tomato that got wet-punched in the face.  It's really ugly when I cry, apparently.  My ex-boyfriend used to tell me that.  Like, thanks, have fun finding a wife in your future when you couldn't even be nice to someone who made you breakfast in bed.  'Coz like, that's what you want to hear when your upset and crying... that you look fucking atrocious.  But nobody was here to see how disgusting I looked so I cried on and on. 


After hanging up the phone with the last person, I stumbled all of four feet into the kitchen for some more wine when the room seriously started to spin.  It occurred to me, in the instant, that I had not been this retarded in a very long time.  I was pretty sure I was going to vomit.  No doubt about it.  My throat was about to give birth to an epic barf baby.  So I did drunk-lamaze breathing, where all you can do is move around with your mouth open in hopes that you will delay the upchucking.  If I stopped swaying on that kitchen floor, I would have had to drunkenly clean up the tile of her kitchen.  My aunt would know that I threw up because it would have made her entire house reek.  Not to mention, the dogs would have probably feasted upon my regurgitated bile.  I made the decision to move myself to the bathroom where I could embrace a toilet bowl with open arms.  I tried to get on my feet, using the wine bottle as a cane, but when that did not work, I decided to crawl.  All the while, I was still crying about some kind of shit.  Class. 


When I approached the bathroom about 4 minutes later, I realized that it was about a seven step walk from the kitchen when well.  But I was not well.  I was smashed.  As I inched myself nearer to the porcelain bowl, I yelled at myself out loud, "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, DANNY!"  I over-exerted myself when I yelled which prompted the throwing up.  Happily, not one drop landed outside of the toilet.  It took about a minute for most of it to exit my stomach and then I rested my head on the seat as I sat on the floor.  


I turned my head to see both of my aunt's massive dogs watching me.  I did not know if my barf was appetizing or if they were genuinely worried about me.  I assume it was a bit of both.  They knew if I died, they would not get fed or let out.  But at the same time, they would have survived on my corpse and vomit if my body gave out, and it certainly felt like it was going to.  I needed to pick myself up off of the floor and let these dogs out for their evening shit.  It was now 7:30 pm.  It was not even dark yet and I was laying on the toilet.  I can't recall if I was laughing at a spider on the toilet paper of not.  I knew it was there and I think I named it Charlotte.  Good times.  Miss that arachnid.  Cheers, my 8-legged friend.


I barfed on-and-off for about another hour until I started to sober up.  It was only 8:24pm when I looked at the digital clock in my aunt's room.  Like a true asshole, I thought, "well, what the fuck am I going to do for the next five hours that I am awake?"  I sighed and plopped myself onto the couch when I noticed that the three last released Harry Potter DVDs were just sitting under the television.  UMMMMM... Marathon?!!!!!


In reality,  I probably should have reversed the entire evening.  I should have discovered the Harry Potter DVDs before I decided to soak myself in an entire family-sized bottle of wine.  The Half-Blood Prince would have been so much more enjoyable if I had not been dry-heaving through the entirety of it.  


I am glad that I took the time out of my life to experience drinking by myself.  Who knows what act(s) I put on while intoxicated and surrounded by others.  Now, I know that if Lady Gaga comes on, I'm not just dancing to impress and lure-in the men folk.  I am dancing because Gaga has some fuckin' sweet tunes.  I also know that I should steer away from bantering with ex-boyfriends via text (so should most of us).  That upsets me even when sober.  So boredom, loneliness and alcohol result in ugly tomato-face Danny.  Apparently, she is the fucking worst.  


I am not saying that I would never drink alone again.  If at any time, in my existence, I am that bored again, I will entertain myself with some alcohol.  Mind you, though,  I have to be extremely withdrawn or have exhausted all other forms of entertainment to make the decision to wreck myself by myself.  


Eh, fuck it.  I would do it on a whim.  Let's be honest.


The next morning, my head felt like someone tried to mummify it but gave up half-way through and just left it to rot.  My hair smelled like it could use some shampoo and if you have ever smelled the inside of a dead person's butthole, that would be the scent of my breath in that moment.  I was rockin' a t-shirt and day-and-a-half old underwear, due to the fact that I had woken up at 2pm that day, only thirteen hours after I decided to start drinking.  When I looked into the mirror, I decided that I looked like a slutty, band groupie getting up to perform a walk-of-shame, which is totally appropriate seeing as I was house-sitting for my aunt, who was infamous in my family for sleeping with Eddie Van Halen in the 80s.  


Ugh, sometimes my self-esteem gets in the way of my dreams.  Maybe next time I see Incubus in concert, I will share my wine with Brandon Boyd.  I am positive I would bring something interesting to his table.  


If not, we could just watch Harry Potter.

Why Would You Shave off Effervescence?

This is my own personal Vagina Monologue.  Or Vagina Mono-blogue.  Yeah,  I word-played that shit.


My parents have never been discrete.  That goes for anything and everything that they have ever done in raising my two sisters and me.  My sisters and I are All-American alpha-females of Italian and Spanish heritage.  Both parents come from Roman Catholic upbringings and grew up right outside of New York City.  So not only are we loud, but we enjoy our food and wine like a pigeon on fresh garbage.  


Both of my parent's mothers raised their children with the knowledge and intelligence of a fourteen-year-old girl and essentially used guilt as a way to keep them in-line.  They were both the eldest sibling in each family, or the 'first pancake' as I like to call first-born children.  My mother was a participant of the Woodstock generation and my father decided that he would start growing his mustache at this time, for he had a really sweet, convertible Jaguar that he used to drag race through The Bronx with.  I guess, when you have those kinds of wheels, a mustache was a standard practice.  However, unlike the Jag, the stache never died.


I have no idea why my parents decided to move to one of the preppiest, wealthiest and lamest town in Connecticut.  They fit in like a crocodile in a Chinese laundromat.  They make a scene even when they don't think they are.  They could care-less if they embarrass their children.


Let me prepare the rest of this story with this notion.  I get that all parents are embarrassing according to their own children, but for a majority of people I know, their parents, at least, fit into their community.  They are not socially awkward, they carry on conversations about intelligent matters and keep their mouths shut when needed.  I don't think my mother or father ever understood their perpetual ridiculousness that seemed to hover above my sisters and me.  They thought they were golden.


I don't think our family ever actually owned a car that was under ten years old.  We have had wood-paneled station wagons when people thought they did not exist anymore.  My father has had at least four different cars since graduated high school.  If one of his cars breaks down, don't worry!  He has another one that he can fix, sitting in our driveway like a stupid fart box.  Same goes for washers and dryers.  If one breaks, he has another one lying around.  Like, how the fuck did he have another dryer lying around?  Why haven't I seen it?  Was it in our garage that we cannot even walk into because all of his trinkets are just chillin' like villains in there?  The only way I can describe what our garage looks like is through song lyrics from The Little Mermaid, "Part of your World"...


"Look at this stuff...
Isn't it neat?
Wouldn't you think my collection's complete?
Wouldn't you think I'm the gir...Dad...
The Dad who has...EVERYTHING!
Look at the trou...garage...
Treasures untold (with mold)
How many wonders can one cavern hold? (HAHAHA a cavern of trinkets)
Lookin' around here you think...
'Sure, he's got FUCKING EVERYTHING!!!!!'
I've got gadgets and gismos of plenty,
I've got whosits and whatsits galore!
You want thing-a-mabobs?
I've got twenty (hahaha way more than twenty)
But who cares
No big deal
I WANT MOOOOORRREEE!"






If you could not tell by my imaginative lament, my father has a bit of a hoarding problem.  He thinks that the world is like it was in the 70s where fixing shit was cheaper than just buying anything brand-new.  In this age, everything we buy has built-in obsolescence.  That's the shitty ways of marketting.  Sorry, Pops!


 You can imagine how his world has been raped and pillaged now a'days due to this.  Still, the mustache sits strong and proud upon his upper lip.  


As readers, you must now understand that my mother obviously had to have had a sense of humor to marry such a mustache.
"You're father was very hip in his day." ---Hip?  Okay, (A) Who said it was okay for you to use that word? Hip. (B) I don't think I have ever seen my father buy, do, see, hear, smell, touch, understand, be around, or learn how to use anything technically qualified as hip.  (C) He...he has a mustache. He has not changed its effervescence since he was my age.  But why would you shave off effervescence? Really.


My mother was that woman who told everyone-and-their-sister about our business before we even knew it had happened to us.  Here is where my Vagina Mono-blogue starts...


It was a warm, April day in seventh grade.  A Saturday to be exact.  The day of the Spring Fling.  The next day would be Easter.  I was getting ready at my friend Moose's house.  Plastering our faces with make-up in which we had no idea how to apply.  Scratch that... we knew how to apply it to our faces, but really had no idea on how to apply it to flatter our attributes.  How dare I once think that I could pull-off peacock-colored eyeshadow?  I have poop brown eyes.  How much more of a moth could I have made myself look? 


I was applying bright pink lipstick when I felt it.  


The moisture.


"...the fuck is that?"


I scooted into the bathroom and pulled down my yellow, heinous Hanes and saw it.  My mouth dropped to my neck and I frowned as hard as my bushy eyebrows could before they penetrated my eyeballs and ruined my sweet make-up job.  I can only describe this sight as horrific, uncalled-for and blasphemous.  I thought I had cancer of the vag for a good two minutes until I realized that this meant now I could technically conceive illegitimate babies if I wanted to do so.  This little piggy got her first period.


Moose's mom gave me a panty-liner for the miniscule amount of uterus plop that exited my twat and then we made our way to the Spring Fling.  All damn night, I kept thinking about my period.  I barely enjoyed dancing six inches apart from the deodorant-less miscreants of my junior high.  If they weren't careful, the could get a thigh-full of poon dooty.  


When I went home that night, I informed my mother that I made blood out me lady parts.  A big part of me was thankful that she was, and has never been, a cryer of sorts.  She just patted me on the back and said, "Congratulations, you're a woman now!"  Like...EW.  How dare you call me a woman!  I barely had pubes.  I looked like Angelica's doll Cynthia (from Rugrats) and a Furby combined, but with braces.  My armpits smelled so bad that they would sweat through the weak Lady Speedstick deodorant that I was using.  If I ever smell the 'floral scent' that Lady Speedstick puts out, ever again, I will throw up right where I am standing.  I do not know which was worse.  My armpits smelling like chicken noodle soup from the cafeteria or Lady Speedstick?  The combination of the two was close to trying to cover up the smell of New Jersey with a thousand bottles of Febreeze.  It just ain't right.


The next morning I was getting ready for Easter Sunday Mass at St. John's Church when I realized I needed a new sanitary napkin.  Even in a house of four women, somehow on this day, by pure destiny, our house was napkin-less.  It was about twenty minutes until the mass started and my uterus was relentless.  I remember thinking that I could not fucking deal with having to cope with this shit every month.  Pads felt like diapers and how many pairs of underwear was I going to ruin from this point on?  


As I pitter-pattered up to my mother, in the kitchen, I casually and quietly suggested that we needed to stop at the store so I could pick up some pads.  This is what she decided was copacetic for the situation at hand...


She walks to the bottom of the stairs and yells at the top of her lungs, "Jeffffffff!  Dana needs to stop at the store to buy sanitary napkins!" ---You fucking bitch.  
My sister Bunny enters from out of nowhere saying, "Mom, are you fucking kidding? Why are you embarrassing her!" 
"You're father isn't stupid.  He knew it had to happen sooner or later!" ---Dumb explanations are always cool.
"No, Mom!" She spat.
"He doesn't care!" Another intelligent response.
"Yeah, but Dana does.  That's so fucking embarrassing."  She was right.  


However, my mom yelling that I was in need of vaginal blood-soaking equipment was not as humiliating as having the him escort me into Stop & Shop and into the feminine isle to retrieve said materials.  My dad did not really want to be in this situation either but the man would do literally anything for the three of us.  That's fucking love.  Mustache-style.  


The moment only became that much more awkward when he asked...
"Which kind do you buy?"
"I don't know...uhhh..." I said into my nails as I crunched on the cuticles.
He picks up a big, blue package with a cartoon of a pad in the center.  
"Maxi with wings?" He looked like he was reading Ancient Chinese.
"What are wings?" I was puzzled.
He said nothing and placed them back into their designated area.  I stood there, staring at a wall of vagina products, wondering what all of them meant.  It was in that moment that I came to understand that my vagina was going to have to under-go a lot of maintenance to keep it at peak condition.  There were panty-liners, panty-liners with wings, maxi-pads, super maxi-pads, maxi-pads with wings, regular tampons, tampons sans applicator (took me years to figure out how those worked... never again...)...all of which had the option of scented or unscented.  This does not even cover half of the things I laid eyes on. Fuck, there were pregnancy tests, ovulation monitors, Vagisil, ovule inserts, feminine deodorant spray, gels and creams, waxing kits and feminine wipes galore.  "You want thing-a-mabobs? I got twenty!"


In the time it took me to realize that my lady bits were going to be more trouble than they are probably worth, my father was bantering to himself.
"Why can't your mother do this?" ---Tangent:  Because, on April 2nd, 1978 you made a vow to a woman that you would never leave her until death do you part.  In the time it will take you to 'part', you both decided to make children, and in that time period you started to drive one another up a fucking wall.  You: with your hoarding and your insane need to fix shit with duct tape and rubber bands.  Mom: with her scatter-brained demeanor and legitimately retarded reaction to losing her keys, in which she passed down to all three of her daughters. Somehow, in her sick and twisted mind, she decided that you, yeah you, out of the both of you two, were the better choice in this situation.  The situation being that I am now excreting female software out of my female hardware. Perhaps, in a fucking weird way, she was trying the emphasize that you were still a team.  If you ask me, she could have picked ANY other situation.


 Or...she was just being lazy.  Which may also be valid.


As my dad and I stood there in front of the lady products with frowny-faces, a middle-aged black lady named "Placenta" decided to butt in. ...No, I am not making this up.  Her name was Placenta and I refuse to ever get over it.  


I just have to inquire as to what her mother must have been thinking when naming this big black lady.  Did she think it sounded pretty?  Did she hear someone say it in the delivery room and think it was a name?  Did she think that they had already named the baby that?  


Anyways, Placenta waltzed up to my father and asked...
"Nee' help?"
My father looked at me through his glasses that were sitting on the bridge of his nose with a nervous grin on his face.  He recognized how stupid this entire thing was and how my mom should have been the one here to help me avoid any of this awkwardness.  He could have just said 'no' and spared us both the agony of Placenta helping us with what kind of pad I will eventually end up sticking to the bridge of my Hanes, but for some fucked up reason he said...
"Yes, my daughter doesn't know which kind of...um..."
"TamPONS? Pads?" She was louder than she should have been.  Those words startled my dad out of his loafers.  
I was speechless.  
"Pads?  I guess.  Is that what you wanted?" They both turned to me as if I now somehow knew exactly what I wanted.  As if I just needed a black lady in a red vest named Placenta to help me realize which type I was to now own.  Was this real life?
"Um...I don't know. Panty liners?"
"Scented?" She asked.  
"I... guess?" I rarely ever turn red, but I could feel the fuschia engulfing my face.  
She grabbed a pink package, handed it to my dad and walked away.  Him and I looked at one another and knew we would never speak of this transaction ever again to each other.  We walked to the cashier, purchased the goods and walked out in silence.


I could see my mom laughing in the front seat like she knew what she had just done.  She did that just to fuck with my dad.  How he gets has survived, I will never know. My sisters were both in the back seat in hysterical tears as they watched our awkward faces come out of the grocery store.  My dad was carrying the bag to the car when my school crush was walking into the store with his mother.  
"Hi, Dana!" *Willy said to me.
"Hey, Willie!"
"How is your Easter?"
"It's..." before I could finish my sentence my dad hands me my bag of poonani paraphernalia.  This translucent bag did not leave much for Willie to wonder what was inside of it.  Was my dad fucking kidding? ..."I have to go.  Church."
The damage was done.  Willie now knew I was a bleeder.  Well, I could kiss 'getting my first kiss before I turned fifteen' goodbye.  


Everyone knew I was 'a woman' by the next week of school.  


All of my mother's friends knew by that afternoon.


I got a card with a $10 bill, in the mail, from my aunt saying "Congrats!"


Great, now I could have Dad buy me more pads.