Hello, Flo

Have you seen the latest ad campaign designed to help girls navigate the winding road of becoming a woman?  Check it out.  The campaign is called Hello Flo, and there's a silly commercial to accompany the website.  

From "First Moon Party" commercial

The gist of the commercial is this:  A junior high girl's friends are all getting their periods.  In an attempt to fit in, the girl fakes getting her period for the first time.  Her mom knows she's faking, but instead of letting her know she knows, the mom says it's a family tradition to throw a "first moon party."  The mom spares no expense having a crazy party celebrating her daughter's fake first period--long guest list, a boy band, red chocolate fountain, uterus piñata, etc.  

Here's the commercial:


I'll weigh in with my opinion on the commercial another time.  What do you think about it?

For now, I want to go down memory lane...  

The commercial took me back to the summer after fifth grade when I got my first period.  Come back in time with me.  It was the summer of "Macarena" and "No Diggity," the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta (way to land it, Kerri Strug!), and Friends, 7th Heaven, and Everybody Loves Raymond were the top shows.   I was (of course) on a road trip family vacation with my parents and two of my brothers to Durango, Colorado.  We had just arrived at the hotel and were going to the hotel pool.  I excused myself to use the restroom when I discovered that I had gotten my period.  Thanks to fifth grade "Reverence for Life" with Miss DeScoise at St. Roberts (and all of the talk about this stuff at sleepovers), I knew what was up.  

I was in a hotel room bathroom in a bathing suit and had no feminine products in sight.  The rest of my family was at the pool, and my mom's suitcase didn't have anything.  With no other options, I rolled up some toilet paper, got dressed, and found my mom at the pool.  After making her promise not to tell my dad and brothers, we got what we needed at the hotel gift shop.  While I was in the hotel room bathroom taking proper care of things, my two brothers had come back from the pool and relished the opportunity to bother me on the other side of the door.  "What are you doooooooooooooing?"  Brothers.  

My big sister, Jenny, was working as a counselor at Camp Foster that summer.  (That's the same YMCA summer camp where Philip and I were counselors the first summer we were dating.)  Since the hotel gift shop didn't have stationery, I settled for sharing the exciting news with Jenny via a postcard.  I thought I was being all sly with my secret message.  I wrote, "You're never going to guess what happened.  I GOT IT!!!"  Yup, top secret.  Years later, Jenny told me how she got the postcard during the larger than life mail distribution ceremony after lunch in the dining hall.  She proceeded to share it with the other counselors, and apparently my not-so-secret postcard made its way to the staff lounge bulletin board.  The Camp Foster staff was thrilled for me!

Ladies, what's your first period story?  I hope it wasn't as mortifying as mine!  Did you want it?  Fear it?  Have nightmares about getting it in the middle of science class?