Keeping it real

Disclaimer: This blog post is not for the faint of heart.  Though if you are a female reader, you've likely been through something like this before (though perhaps not handled quite as ridiculously.)

Saturday morning I drove over to my sister Beth's house to meet Laura, our girlfriend.  We were all going to drive to Chicago for our friend Stephanie's birthday.  We were in Laura's car, on the way to pick up Jenny, our fourth when I made an unpleasant discovery. "Oh boy..."
"What?" My sister asked, turning around.
"Shit."
"What?"
"Dammit."
She kept staring at me, so I continued. "I bled through my pants." I had my period and it was day two. Day two is the worst.  "Oh, help! Someone give me a napkin or something so I can stop the flow! Argh! It's like I'm hemorrhaging!"
"I'm sorry!" Beth cried. "I have nothing. Laura?"
"Look in the glove box", Laura said glancing back at me sympathetically."
"Nothing."
"Dammit!"  I looked around but couldn't find anything but my hat and mittens. I sure wasn't using those.  Then I grabbed the cardboard cozy off my Starbucks cup.  I folded it.  And stuffed it down my pants.
My sister laughed. 
"I have to stop the flow!" I said.
When we finally got to Jenny's, I made small talk with her father-in-law while Beth and Laura used the two bathrooms. Why did I let them go ahead of me?!  I blabbed about our ride to Jenny's father-in-law and he laughed. All the while I was thinking, 'let me into that bathroom before this mess gets any worse!
Finally I went in and got the cardboard out of my underwear and inspected the damage. My jeans were soaked through. "Oh this is terrible!" I said with dismay.  Loudly apparently because I heard Beth through the door.
"You can wash them out here and borrow some of Jenny's pants maybe?"
I washed them out as best I could in the sink.  Looking around that there were no errant drops of blood anywhere to scare Jenny's father-in-law.
Then I went into Jenny's bathroom and found the hair dryer.  I could hear the girls in the kitchen.  "Do I hear the hairdryer?  What's Alie doing?"  They all know I don't dry my hair.  All three of them came in to find me with hair dryer down my pants.
"Hello." I said.
They all burst into laughter.
Later that night, when we returned to Stephanie's apartment from the bar and I was changing out of the new pair of pants that I bought in Andersonville to replace my soiled ones for the night, I overheard Beth and Laura in the spare bedroom.  Beth was telling Laura that they could share a bed if she didn't hog it.
"You're an asshole!" Laura said.
"No I'm not!" Beth replied. "I'm just keeping it real.

Me too.  I hope you weren't offended by this tale.  And if you are female and this is a familiar story, I hope you took some solace in knowing that someone else suffered such a fate.  And told about it. Just keeping it real.