My friend's daughter just got her period.

Now, me, I have sons so I never experienced that momentous event, but I remember when my sister got her period. Our family was in Mexico and it had been a tense trip, what with my sister exuding all sorts of coming-of-age hormones and my dad exuding all sorts of don't-you-be-looking-at-my-daughter hormones at the guys who were picking up on Karen's coming-of-age hormones. I recall that the actual day Karen got her period she and Dad had a big fight because Karen had her lips parted (as opposed to pursed, I guess. And locked) and Dad said she was just asking for male attention by doing that. Now I have no idea who was right - for all I know, Karen had a deviated septum and Dad forcing her to keep her lips pursed could have resulted in her getting no air at all and possible eventual death. Which, probably, remembering how freaked my Dad was about his daughter growing up, would have been pretty much 50/50 on the scale of his daughter being sexually attractive to men/vs death.

Anyway, Karen whispered to my mom that night that she had just gotten her period and my mom called the Rosenfelds, our friends with whom we were traveling in Mexico, and they came down to our room and everyone had champagne.

Except Karen, who was mortified and stayed in a corner, I think. And except for my dad, who was frantically trying to fashion a chastity belt out of old huaraches and broken pieces of Oaxacan pottery.

I was about ten years old and although I got the gist of what was happening, I wasn't particularly emotionally attached to the moment. Nina Rosenfeld and I had spent that day barfing our guts out on the steps of the hotel and then, Nina got stuck in the hotel elevator and then, that same night, our friend Cindy called us from LA to say that Jayne Mansfield had been killed. Which, in my young mind, indelibly connected barfing and stuck elevators and Jayne Mansfield and convertibles with getting your period and, I am certain, resulted in some really weird shit in my head concerning sex. Which is why - now that I think of it - I sometimes fake orgasms when "Project Runway" is about to start and Robin is still having the time of his life on top of me.

Yeah, that's why.

So when I got my period a few years later, remembering the champagne and barfing and Jayne Mansfield, I told no one.

This is so much the way of the second child, isn't it? You just deal with your own shit, quietly. Unfortunately, that only works when the second child has a modicum of common sense and ability to read instructions; otherwise, that second child might wind up not realizing that you remove the hard cardboard container from the actual tampon before inserting it into your.....you know....your, well, let's just call it, your Bat Mitzvah (I just decided that Bat Mitzvah is a totally excellent euphemism for vagina, don't you agree?)  and the second child - sweet, simple second child - walks around for five days a month with an actual box of Tampax inside her, walking as if she's riding a mechanical bull and when she sits down on the hard, wooden chairs in her junior high school classes, almost faints from the pain.

It also certainly didn't help that I got my information about getting your period from that stupid ass Jiminy Crickett movie they showed us in fourth grade. I came away from that flick thinking that you get your period at age 12 and it doesn't stop - ever, even for a moment - until age 45. Yikes. That was some future shock for ten year old me. I figured I only had, like, two more years of a normal life until I started bleeding for the next 33 years.

And, while we're on the subject, why did they choose Jiminy Crickett to talk to us about girly shit? He's a boy, for fuck's sake. Oh, and a cricket. And although he seemed avuncular and intelligent for a cricket, and even though he fit into the tiny white doctor's coat and wore wire-rimmed glasses which probably cinched the audition for him, that just didn't make him OBGYN.

 Which, in conclusion, is why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving.