Once I worked as an intern in the state capital. One of the representatives I worked for was this middle-aged guy. And he hated the tampon and napkin machines in the women’s bathrooms. Hated them. He insisted that they weren’t necessary.
I found out why after I’d been working there, oh, about a month. My period started suddenly, as it sometimes does, and I asked to excuse myself to go to the ladies’ room. He wanted to know why. I told him.
He started ranting about how lazy women were. How we wasted time. How we were so careless and unhygenic, and that there was no call for that. He finished by telling me that I certainly was NOT going to the ladies’ room and that I was just going to sit there and work. He finished this off with a decisive nod, as if I’d just been told and there could be no possible argument.
“If I don’t go,” I said in an overly patient tone, “the blood is going to soak through my pants, stain my new skirt that I just bought, and possibly get on this chair I’m sitting in. I need something to soak up the blood. That’s why I need to go to the bathroom.”
His face turned oatmeal-gray; an expression of pure horror spread across his face. He leaned forward and whispered, “Wait, you mean that if you don’t go, you’ll just keep on bleeding? I thought that women could turn it off any time that they wanted!”
I thought, You have got to be kidding.
Several horrified whispers later, I learned that he wasn’t. He actually thought a) that women could shut down the menstrual cycle at will, b) that we essentially picked a week per month to spend more time in the bathroom, i.e. to goof off, and c) that napkins and tampons were sex toys paid for by Health and Human Services. I didn’t know the term then, but he believed that tampons were dildos. Which was why he and a good number of his friends considered them luxuries.
And that’s how, at twenty, I had to give a talk on menstruation to a middle-aged married state representative who was one of my bosses. American politics, ladies and gentlemen.
That’s.., that’s insane.
what the fuck did i just read
This explains so much about American politics, I just
museum curator, watching steve waltz into the smithsonian, the memory of having the stolen cap america authentic howling commando era uniform returned dirty and ridden with bullet holes still fresh in their mind: hide the VALUABLES
steve, reaching over the rope to poke at something on display: it’s my goddamn stuff???
Mundane America. Broken pole with rope and an American Flag. Cincinnati, Ohio.
Wait. Wait.
Wait.
I know that telephone pole.
I know that telephone pole intimately because I’m the one who broke it.
Thats the pole next to Sycamore Jr. High, in between the jr high school and Pipkins, where I had my second car accident. A woman t-boned my car and drove me into that pole in 2008 and it took them years to actually take it down.
That black metal pole you see just beyond the broken phone pole is a “Now Leaving/Welcome To Blue Ash, Ohio” sign, visible at 5520 Cooper Road on google maps.
(the flag is there, btw, because its the starting point for the Blue Ash/Montgomery July 4th parade.)
The internet is so staggeringly immense that I can’t help but be disproportionately delighted when things like this happen.
Also Mcgonagall: that wand needs replacing, Weasley
Whoa there!
Shitpost or not, we do not come after Professor McGonagall on this planet.
It was the best thing a teacher could do in either situation.
You’ve got an abused boy who has never had anything other than the spiders in his cupboard, he is grasping at every new, amazing, thing he finds because it’s all so wonderful? You give him a new, amazing, thing.
You have a boy who grew up in a household where family comes first, where humbleness is key, where taking handouts is seen as embarrassing? You remind that boy that he needs to find a way to replace his broken school supplies and then you sit back and do nothing because you know the family will sort itself out, it always does, and to interfere would be an insult on that perseverance and the family as a whole.
Harry was ecstatic to receive the broom. Ron would have been mortified if his teacher gave him a wand (and so would the rest of the Weasleys).
That’s how you teach.
Not just by knowing which of your kids needs something but by knowing which of your kids will accept something when you give it to them.
WE DO NOT COME AFTER PROFESSOR MCGONAGALL ON THIS PLANET.
