How To Get Excused From This Period

(I am in sixth grade. Our substitute teacher for social studies is a young man in his twenties. Being our normal sixth grader selves, we are yelling and talking instead of doing our assignment. My friend, being frustrated, shakes her desk, and a clean, unopened, tampon rolls out. My friend screams, then runs to the back of classroom.)

Substitute: “What’s wrong?”

(My friend points a shaky finger at her desk.)

Friend: “L-look!”

(The substitute walks to the desk, looks into it, sees the tampon, then suddenly stands back up straight hurriedly, and walks back to the front of the room.)

Substitute: “Go throw it away!”

Friend: “No! I’m not touching it!”

(They go back and forth for a few minutes. Eventually my friend goes to the bathroom to get toilet paper so she doesn’t have touch it. She picks it up and walks back to the bathroom to throw the tampon away. Our science teacher happens to walk by and pick up the tampon from my friend’s hand.)

Science Teacher: *shaking the tampon at my friend* “YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO USE THESE ONE DAY! YOU NEED TO GET OVER YOUR FEAR OF THEM!”

(My friend got over her ‘fear’ of tampons, for obvious reasons. To this day, her face turns pink if you bring this story up.)