“Don’t go chasing waterfalls . . .” Ugh! The year was 1995 and the radio was still playing that TLC song every fucking day! Whatever, it was finally summertime in the Pacific Northwest.

BY RACHEL FAIRCLOTH

IMAGE BY ELINA SAZONOVA

“Don’t go chasing waterfalls . . .” Ugh! The year was 1995 and the radio was still playing that TLC song every fucking day! Whatever, it was finally summertime in the Pacific Northwest. I was thirteen years old and my best friend, Brooklyn, was twelve. We had been best friends since third grade, when I started at Hayden Lake Elementary in Northern Idaho. We immediately bonded through our amicable weirdness, which ostracized us from the rest of our classmates. Over the years, we spent every moment we could together. We would wander around the playground during recess and observe “healthy” behaviour in children our age. Brooklyn and I chose not to interact with those kids. Instead, we’d draw boobs and wieners on the rusted metal fenceposts around the field using a piece of chalk Brooklyn had stolen from class. Maybe our Paleolithic art was a subconscious nod to our changing bodies and the “red tide” on the horizon.

Earlier that same year, my family moved from Hayden Lake, Idaho, to Richland, Washington, because of my dad’s job. We had to leave behind the beautiful ponderosa pines, the bounty of white-tailed deer with their cute piles of Raisinet poops, the dream house my parents built, and the lake where we had spent so much time swimming, fishing, boating, and inner-tubing. Sometimes, I would convince myself a hammerhead shark was lurking in the waters and was going to get me! In the winter, we tried to skate on the frozen lake. The ice made those cool Star Wars laser sounds. Pew-Sloush! The surrounding forest and boulder-filled beach provided a plethora of activities for Brooklyn and me to use our imaginations. Was that a fallen fir tree down on the beach? No, it was a pterodactyl returning to her nest. Duh! At Hayden Lake, I discovered nature, enveloped by the joyful weightlessness of its waters or cloaked in the safety of the quiet forest. Little did I know it would be the last place where I’d enjoy the outdoors as a kid.

On the other hand, Richland was a dry, desolate-looking place with actual sagebrush rolling down the streets like in an old western. If you wanted to go swimming, your only option was the freezing cold Columbia River, with its dash of toxic waste courtesy of the nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Thanks, World War II plutonium! I hated living in Richland and spent a lot of time indoors. The worst part was being separated from Brooklyn. A state line and a three-hour drive now stood between us at a critical time in our lives.

We were girls becoming women soon—cue the creepy Neil Diamond song—as in, starting our periods. My mom didn’t leave me in the dark about menstruation, but I also didn’t feel super comfortable talking to her about it. My period wasn’t something I’d been looking forward to. In fact, I was one of those girls who feared the day I would have to deal with “that” and wave goodbye to my carefree childhood.

Childhood left me anyway about two weeks after our move to Richland. It was as if in crossing the state line, I entered a wormhole where everything that was once familiar was now gone. Of course, I told my mom and she let me make a long-distance phone call to Brooklyn, this being way before teens had cell phones. Brooklyn had started her period before me, so now I could understand all her woes firsthand: cramping and bloating, feeling tired and hungry, discovering a Rorschach test in your undies. All this was on top of the havoc hormones were already wreaking on our bodies and acne-prone faces. There were new sensations to deal with, including the pain in my lower back. It hurt so much that I even sat in the brown family recliner, which I never did, because my dad and brother would always sit in that cushy chair and pick their noses, flicking whatever they found into the living room cosmos. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the drop zone. On the plus side, I felt lucky my period started at home. In school, I alternated between red and purple Bongo jeans in case I was caught off guard. Oh, the omnipresent fear!

Now that I had survived my first period without the comfort of my best friend, my job was to make sure that no one knew the next time it happened. This was top-secret information. I didn’t want my dad to know, and I didn’t want my brother to know. Literally no one should know. Middle school boys were the worst, always jumping at any chance to make fun of a girl if she had to excuse herself for a feminine emergency. All this male bullshit from peers and my brother’s torment fueled my anxiety and urge to keep my menstruation a secret. Watching Carrie probably didn’t help either.

In August, my parents let me visit Brooklyn. We met her family in Ritzville, Washington, the midpoint between the Henry David Thoreau paradise of Hayden Lake and the Shitsville of Richland. What made this trip particularly exciting was our planned excursion to Silverwood Theme Park, just north of my old hometown. Before leaving Richland, I checked my period calendar. My lady days would be coming soon, so I made sure to slap on the biggest pad I had, just in case. I wasn’t going to let a period ruin one of the best days of the year, dammit!

Brooklyn’s mom dropped us off at Silverwood, and we got to spend the day in a theme park without adult supervision. It was the best day ever! Our favourite attraction was Thunder Canyon, a water ride where eight strangers faced each other around a large raft that went down rapids and waterfalls. As soon as the ride finished, we would get off and immediately run back to the entrance.

I must have grown used to the waterlogged, bloated burrito in my underwear. After the fifth or sixth time of getting soaked on the ride and running back for more, I felt something slowly slide down my leg, followed by a saturated plop. My pad had fallen out of my shorts and onto the asphalt like an aborted Pillsbury Doughboy hittin’ a hot skillet, with sad little twisted wing-arms. Apparently, all those trips on Thunder Canyon had soaked my underwear, causing the adhesive strips to wear off. Luckily, there was no blood, just a white, soggy mess of Poppin’ Fresh. It took me a second to realize what happened, and I managed to yell “Brooklyn!” and pointed to the ground. She looked at me, at the pad, then back at me. We both broke into shocked laughter and took off running. In an instant, my fear of people knowing that I was menstruating was blown out of the water or, more accurately, blown out by water.

What could have been a humiliating experience turned out to be one of the most freeing moments of my life. The most mortifying thing that could have happened did, but I survived it. With my best friend by my side, I could laugh off the pubescent stunt my soggy crotch performed that day. It was still embarrassing enough that I didn’t pick up the mess; I just freaked out and ran away as fast as possible. “Don’t go chasing waterfalls . . .” No TLC, in this case waterfalls were exactly what I needed. Still, sorry to the person who had to pick that thing up.

Rachel Faircloth is an international student from Washington (the place below B.C.). She is currently studying Television Writing and Producing at Humber College. She is particularly interested in writing for late-night television. In her free time, she stays up late watching T.V. while thinking, “I will pay for this in the morning.”

Image: Person’s Feet in Water (Pexels)

Edited for publication by Chantal Roberge, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.

HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.