Mary B. • New Jersey • 25
It was a few days before 5th grade started. I was supposed to go pick up my team's soccer uniforms with my dad, and when I woke up and went to the bathroom I thought I'd had diarrhea, but then realized it was my period.
I told my mom and she cried (because she was happy) and showed me how to use a pad. My dad didn't know why I was taking so long to get ready, so he kept shouting up the stairs to hurry up until my mom told him to settle down.
There was only one other girl in my school who also had her period, and I spent most of the first few years after I got it embarrassed about it.
