Hold On

 

I make a point of not giving advice because I’m utterly terrible at it. Once a friend confessed to me she was cheating on her husband and was doing cocaine regularly, and I suggested she listen to Hold On by Wilson Philips.

So when students come into my office, with a wide range of personal problems, I listen thoughtfully, and the most I say is a generic plea for them to keep at it and stay strong. Lately, I’m finding I have to do this with coworkers who are forced to pivot careers after recent budget cuts.

A colleague came into my office to chit-chat about her situation, and she stopped mid-sentence after doing a double-take when looking at my whiteboard. She asked, “Are those tampons?”

Lined up on the little silver tray at the bottom of the board were four tampons I forgot to put in my purse. She said they look like dry-erase markers anyway.

The school has free period products. I take pads and tampons from the gym too. The pads from the gym are a last resort, but they’ve come in handy during a pinch. They are about an inch thick and very sad in length. You better not shift in your seat wearing one of them, or it's bound to be disastrous.

Kiki saw the complimentary products in their smartly packaged cardboard containers, lining the bottom of my tote bag, and said, “You’ll take every tampon in town that isn’t nailed down.”

This made me laugh, but I defended myself and my choices. “Darling, these programs are meant to be used. Women should always have access to these products. Besides, I pay a lot of money for our gym. This hardly makes up for the stretches of time when I don’t utilize my membership.”

Over the last month, I was way too busy to go to the gym, although it would have helped with stress management. I passed out final exams in one of my classes and told my students I’m absorbing their stress because I had a cold sore, and my eye started twitching.

I’m sure a helpful hippie woman could easily diagnose me, but I’m a walking sponge of other people’s energy. By the end of the term, I’m interacting with 120 students daily, and I get to a point where I have my period twice a month. I enjoy maybe two days where I’m not PMSing. There’s got to be an easy fix, like sunglasses or a lead vest.

I read Chelsea Handler’s latest book, and she has the opposite problem. Where I will start my period if I’m around anyone on their’s, she has the power to give women periods from being around her. She calls herself an alpha-period, which makes me the most beta-period. I used to call myself superwoman from this strange phenomenon, thinking I’m tapped into the divine feminine energy, but maybe I’m just way too easygoing.

During the two-hour test, I read my book and kept an eye out for cheaters. My God, is that the most uncomfortable and sad situation to find myself in. My sister was texting me, too. Every day, she lets me know about her most recent bowel movement. I think it’s because she’s a nurse. After I give her congrats or condolences, I tell her about mine. She genuinely cares. We always conclude that everything is better when we eat three prunes a day.

She told me about my brother and his family visiting last weekend, and I told her about the kids and I visiting our parents and little sister. Over the weekend, we all ate dinner at my aunt's and uncle’s house. I told my uncle, “If you know of any single men to set me up with, I’m ready.”

He might have been looking at my cold sore when he replied, “Oh, ok.”

Then I went on describing the perfect person I was looking for, and he thoughtfully listened. When the get-together ended, we said our goodbyes. I grabbed my purse with a hundred tampons and queued up Wilson Philips for the car ride home.

Sometimes the advice you offer others is exactly what you need to hear yourself.