Every year my church youth choir went on a week-long tour, singing at private concerts and church services. We usually traveled several hours a day by charter bus in order to reach the farthest corners of the earth - exotic locations like colonial Williamsburg and Zip City, Alabama.

Regardless of our location, we were ninety-five junior high/high schoolers, so we had a blast. We tortured kids who were foolish enough to fall asleep. We locked chaperones in the bathroom. We sang songs and played car games and learned the ever-changing rules of Mow. 

Spending seven hours a day on a bus wasn't so bad, that is, until the summer of my seventh grade year. Despite the fact that the bus bathroom was horribly disgusting and the ever embarassing moment of every supercool senior sitting in the back of the bus, who would inevitably see you walk into said disgusting bathroom, I really had to pee. Or at least that's what I thought. Upon arriving in the jolting, jostling bathroom I discovered, to my horror, that my panties were soaking with blood. Now we're not talking about a little trickling or dribble, we're talking full-fledged rushing torrents of menstration. Of course I had not prepared for this moment. 

I had no tampons (not that I would've known what to do with one); I had no pads or panty-liners. All I could find at this moment, this moment of pain and shame and bewilderment, was toilet tissue -that rough, generic toilet paper that is commonly found in gas stations and supermarkets. I wadded it up and tried to secure it to my underwear. No luck. Then my moment of brilliance. No, I didn't think to ask one of the female chaperones for a tampon. No, I didn't remember that there were thirty other girls on the bus, one of whom inevitably would have had a pad. My brilliant thought was to wrap the toilet paper around the bottom of my underwear, the part that actually touches your, um, you know, creating more of a diaper than anything else. Pure genius. Now remember I'm on a bus,  riding along for another three hours before we reach the mall (our lunch stop). Please also remember that toilet paper is not meant for long-lasting absorbancy. Khakis and a bus full of teenage boys.... not a good combination. The shame will live on forever.

---Elaina