If you like Platoon but hate Tampax, get out of here, soldier
July 21st, 2006
Sophie runs down the stairs hollering, “I GOT MY PERIOD! I GOT MY PERIOD!”
I head for my five-year-old in slo-mo Platoon mode. Face: rictus of horror. Eyes: bulging. Arms and legs: churning grotesquely through battlefield strewn with bloodied maxi pads and tampons.
“YOU GOT YOUR PEEEEEEEER-EEEEE-OOOOOOOD?!?!?!”
She hears that. In my head I I hear, Damn that bovine growth hormone! Someone will pay for this! At the very least they will pay for soymilk and feminine products and Embrace Your Early Womynhood Drumming Retreats!
I put my hands on Sophie’s shoulders and try very hard not to look like Willem Dafoe in Platoon (Willem Dafoe who once leaned against my 1986 Toyota in lower Manhattan). When terrible things happen, my face morphs into Willem Dafoe’s face in Platoon. It is a problem. One of many problems of mine, half of which you already know about.
I try to look like Sela Ward instead. Sophie squints at me. No good. I try to look like Cat Stevens. I try to become the Peace Train.
“It’s okay,” I say. “You can tell me what’s going on. Why do you think you’re having your period? Are you bleeding?”
She starts laughing. She doesn’t know who Willem Dafoe is, or what a war-crazed Willem Dafoe looks like, but she knows the look on my face is funny stuff. She is not feeling the Peace Train.
“You’re not having your period, are you?”
“No,” she says. “I was joking.”
She chuckles and skips up the stairs, back to her Cabbage Patch Kid and her nice flat-chested, prepubescent Groovy Girls.
I start hiccuping, which seems as good a response as any.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized, Because I said so. (Parenting)
34 Comments
1. mom on a wire | July 21st, 2006 at 3:09 pm
It kind of hurts to panic and laugh at the same time, I just found out.
2. Amy | July 21st, 2006 at 3:12 pm
my daughter did this to me. she was ten and was very serious. we sorted out what had happend and it wasn’t a period. i made sure she wasn’t in sight when I broke into nervous laughter. it was funny and scary at the same time.
good luck with that girl. as my family would say, she’s a pistol.
3. Kathryn, DYM | July 21st, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Okay, you just totally freaked me out with that one. Let’s hope she waits as long as possible to start. Then let’s hope she stays pregnant or nursing from then on so she doesn’t have to deal with it… wait… how old was she again? Well, that’s been my accidental strategy these past few years.
4. the Mater | July 21st, 2006 at 3:20 pm
You mean my precocious granddaughter, not yet in kindergarten, actually knows what a period is?!!
Isn’t this carrying “show and tell” a bit too far?!
Can’t you just explain that a period is a form of punctuation which ends a sentence? Jeez.
So what was she hollering about?
5. karina | July 21st, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Sophie sure is sophisticated for a five-year-old. How is she going to try to freak you out when she’s six? Tell you she has gonorrhea? Entertainment-wise, it’s a good thing (for her–and the blogosphere) that her mother flies into Willem Dafoe mode so easily!
Now take a deep breath, Jenn…
6. Spot the Wonder Dog | July 21st, 2006 at 4:25 pm
ughhh.
This whole post is just guy-repellent, isn’t it?
Not to worry though, I’m sure this is just the first of many happy, laughing moments that Sophie’s period will generate for you.
7. ellamama | July 21st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
absolutely fabulous!
8. Charlie | July 21st, 2006 at 4:46 pm
I am a soldier. Really, I am. I do not like Tampax. True story. I have bought them plenty of times though. I share Willem Dafoe’s birthday. Tomorrow. Jesus year plus 6? Is that how I put it? Hey, Willem Dafoe played Jesus. Sorry, off on a tangent here Jenn.
Funniest Sophie story yet. Acting! (think Jon Lovitz on SNL)
9. geogirl | July 21st, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Sounds like somebody needs to hear the story of the boy who cried period……I mean wolf.
10. Vikki | July 21st, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Willem Dafoe kinda freaks me out…there is something about his face and the missing vowel in the latter part of his first name. I digress…
So, what was going on that led her to the period statement? A Kool-Aid stain? Or, does she really just know how to get ya?
By the way…the bovine growth hormone part was excellent!
11. kaysusan | July 21st, 2006 at 5:25 pm
I love to read your blog. You are just like my daughter! She has two children aged 5 and 6 and number three is due in November, and guess what, her name is Jenn and she spells it with 2ns2!
12. Jill Urbane, The Mentor Mom | July 21st, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Your daughter, well, all I can say is she’s good…
13. Sarah | July 21st, 2006 at 6:01 pm
I thought a fright was meant to cure hiccups, not start them!
14. ChristyD | July 21st, 2006 at 8:58 pm
She definitely got her mom’s good sense of humor!
15. wopd | July 21st, 2006 at 10:05 pm
She’ll probably want to shave her legs soon too!
16. Rina | July 21st, 2006 at 10:12 pm
Please don’t let her tell Eleanor about the facts of life next month. The other day she asked how babies come out of mommies tummies, and while my husband chewed on his lower lip and hemmed and hawed I told her, “The mommy goes to the hospital and they take it out there.”
It was all she needed.
I won’t tell you what a mangle I made trying to explain how the baby got in there in the first place.
17. Contrary | July 22nd, 2006 at 1:53 am
Ah, kids. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t sell ‘em to the gypsies. Not legally, at least.
I recall my baby girl coming home from a friend’s house, holding her stomach and declaring, ‘I must be starting my period’.
She was 9. It was a possibility, albeit remote.
Turns out she and her friend had been hanging out with her friend’s teenaged sister and her friend and picked up a few new phrases along the way.
That was my first batch of gray hairs.
Oh, that’s the same year she shaved her legs for the first time. WIthout my permission, of course. I only found out because I walked into the bathroom while she was in the tub trying to stop the bleeding from eleventy million little nicks on her legs.
That was my second batch of gray hairs.
Ya know, I think I’m calling the gypsies after all.
18. J | July 22nd, 2006 at 2:40 am
Oh man you’re in trouble. How freakin’ hilarious. And I almost pissed myself with Karina’s comment.
My six year old daughter likes to sneak pads and put them in her underwear- when she was younger I told her they were big bandaids.
19. Barb | July 22nd, 2006 at 7:39 am
So.. we were going to invite the family over for a dip, but Sophie has her “friend!” Do you isolate her in THE CAGE when she has it?
See what happened , you taught her to read the boxes and let her watch all those tv commercials! The Mater needs to get here soon!
In My DAYS we learned all hush , hush, girls herded out of the classroom for The Talk at around the old age of 10! My good ole mom(RIP) handed me a book……..
20. marian | July 22nd, 2006 at 9:13 am
Hey, it happens. My son had a friend whose sister entered puberty at around 6. Bovine growth hormone indeed. They had to give her weekly anti-hormone injections to get it to stop. Meanwhile she had the hots for my 9 year old son. That was when I started buying organic milk products.
21. Bethany | July 22nd, 2006 at 11:02 am
I’ll never forget being 8 or 9, sitting on the toilet picking a scab off my knee.
“BLOOD! Mom! I’m bleeding!” I shouted.
She came tripping and gasping into the room and said “What? What? Blood? Did you get it? Did you get IT??”
Come to think of it, after I showed her my knee? I may have heard her hiccup.
22. Coley | July 22nd, 2006 at 2:23 pm
ROTFL!!! This one’s a killer!!!
23. samantha jo campen | July 22nd, 2006 at 5:01 pm
So she’s 5 going on 25 eh? Good luck to you!
I got pubic hair at the age of FOUR and my mom flipped that I was going to get my period next and I’d live a life of period-induced trauma. DIdn’t happen thank god. The hair is easy to hide and no big deal. But those monthly hormones and cramps in a child that still needs mommy to kiss a boo-boo? Makes me cringe just thinking about it.
Glad it was a false alarm!!
24. Kristin | July 22nd, 2006 at 5:20 pm
That is hilarious. I found your blog through Crazy Hip Mamas. My daughter is almost 4 and she is always telling me crazy stuff…I think…just to freak me out. I worry about her getting an early period too…urg! William Defoe, eh? Interesting…
25. Lori | July 22nd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
So, I’m not the only one who isn’t allowed privacy in the bathroom…
A few weeks ago my five year old son asked, “When are you going to start your period, Mom?” (we were walking through the mall at the time)
26. Lisa S | July 22nd, 2006 at 9:42 pm
What a funny post….hahahahahahah I am not surprised, because Connor will be 5 next month and he says the damndest things!
27. Mir | July 23rd, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Care to join me in the Witness Protection Program when our girls are teens? Hmmmmmmm?
28. Deb | July 24th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Just a preview of things to come when IT really does come……
Then and only then does my dh run cowering into a corner for cover as my daughter and I sync up to the moon and begin our Reign of Terror…….
29. lindsay | July 24th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
my goodness - i am so glad to have a son!
30. lena | July 24th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
This story seriously HURT ME!
31. ali | July 24th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
your 5-year-old and my 5-year old could totally be besties…:)
32. kt flynnie | July 25th, 2006 at 11:38 am
sophie is so perceptive, she must have an old soul or something?
33. Elizabeth S. | July 27th, 2006 at 7:20 am
Evil Genius.
That’s whatcha got there, Jenn - one bone fide Evil Genius.
Now, if you could just figure out how to DIRECT said Genius…. I have no doubt you could ‘have it all’. Maybe not legally or ethically, but you’d have it!
34. Ashley | July 27th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Your daughter is a genius!
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