periods

when i first had my period i thought that i'm going to die plus i must stop drinking Shani and red soft drinks! but after i discovered the truth i felt so stupid.

Aaliyah

I used to believe that when you had your period, urine came out (and not blood). then of course, i learned in sex-ed about the whole thing...it was kind of frightening.

casey

A friend of mine thought that sanitary napkins were like adult diapers -- women would wear them if they didn't have time to stop working and use the bathroom.

Erika

I used to believe that tampons went up your butt because you have a hold there!

ali

I don't think I knew about periods at this time but I used to think that ladies had to wear pads every day and change them every time they went to the washroom.

tina

I used to believe that women always had milk coming from their breasts and when they had a baby it drunk the milk, but when women didn’t have a baby they had to put cotton wool in their bras to absorb the milk. I thought this was called ‘having a period’, and these periods lasted until a woman had another baby. And a woman always had to wear a bra to put the cotton wool in to absorb the milk.
My mum told me that if I was naughty and refused to do a poo she would put soap up my bum, and I thought that that would make me poo.

Anon

when i was like 2 my older sibling who now had a sex change from a man to a woman told me u put batteries in tampons to make them work need less to say when got to the age there were no batteiries

star child 77

When I used the loo at my mum's work cafeteria (I would be about 8-9)there was a notice in the ladies - 'please place all sanitary ware in the incinerator provided' which was outside the loos near the sinks. I came out with my litttle 'bag' of used toilet tissue and placed it into the burner. This must have amused the other ladies as they watched me, exchanging knowing looks at each other. I never caught on until I had been told about periods and then could have died with embarassment. For years after, if I smelt that awful burning smell only associated with those burners it would remind me of my innocence.

Janice Davis

An older lad told me and a mate what he had learned about periods during sex education classes, but explained the function as washing away eggs, this cracked me and my mate up who both thought he was trying to tell us our mums would lay eggs once a month

stan the man

I first got my period when I was in Singapore on holiday almost twenty years ago. My mother had warned us about not drinking from the taps for fear of getting a tummy bug, and had told me and my brother off serverely for buying and eating an ice cream from a street vendor... When my period came for the first time it was brown rather than red! Despite being informed on periods, with all the lectures on tummy infections I was sure that the brown discharge was due me dying...I was so worried that my mother would be angry at me I threw out my underwear for the rest of the trip - luckily we were on our way home in just two days!

anon