After a 1935 tragedy, a priest vowed to teach kids about menstruation

[pnwmom]

7. That's awful! I'm sorry you had to be subjected to that.

I didn't expect my period in 6th grade, even though we'd learned about them in a few weeks of instruction at school. My mother had told us she didn't start till she was 15, so I thought I had plenty of time.

It wasn't really my mother's fault, but when I got my first period a few weeks before my 12th birthday I was too embarrassed to tell her. For that first summer I just used lots of folded up toilet paper! And I put a bloody pair of underwear into a plastic bag and put it on a closet shelf. Months later, I retrieved the bag . . . and the contents had gotten moldy. I put it in the garbage can outside.

When it was time to go back to school in September I finally got up the courage to tell my mother and she was fine, like most mothers are. And I had real pads from then on -- not toilet paper.

But remembering how embarrassed I'd been about the whole thing, I got so mad about the proposed law in Florida. Many girls get their periods in elementary school, and this is so unfair to them.