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Test. Yes.

Alpo

For a carless pad, a trip to the convinience store is a big adventure. One sunny Saturday I had my 13 year old best friend over to play. She was dropped off at my house in a head-to-toe, black and white polka dot matching blouse and pants. Covering her not yet controlled curly red hair sat a black Debbie Gibson hat. What a rad outfit, I knew there was a reason she was my best friend forever. BFF and I retreated to the kitchen and snacked on Fruit Roll Ups and fudgesicles while we waited for The Mickey Mouse Club to come on TV. We were obsessed with that show. But for a good reason. The summer before, BFF and I were at a 14 and under club in Orlando and got to dance with (well next to) two Mickey Mouse Club members (neither of which was Justin Timberlake). We watched the show religiously hoping that one day they might remember that fateful night and announce their love for the two nameless California girls in the Bongo jeans and Hypercolor t-shirts. We were so hot that night.
Once the show ended (with no shout out to us), BFF suggested we walk a mile down the road to the convinience store and buy some magazines (Bop and Sassy of course). The feeling of being out on the streets, approximately .6 miles away from home was priceless. If I knew the movie Easy Rider back then I would have said the feeling of infinite freedom was comparable. Anticipating the thought of being able to drive in a mere three years nearly made my head pop.
On our way back from the store, magazines and slurpees in tow, BFF and I spied a car holding teenage boys. As the car approached us, a boy popped out the window to get a better look. The boy and I made eye contact and I forced an awkward, mouth full of cherry slurpee stained braces, smile. What happened in the next few seconds would forever change my pads self. As if in slow motion, the car drove right by and instead of throwing flowers and poetic complimets at BFF and me, the boy in the car began to bark. At us.
Totally unphased, BFF threw her face right back into the Bop magazine and resumed drooling over youngest New Kid, Joey McIntyre. I on the other hand, died. Up until that point I had had no idea that I was bark-worthy ugly. It's all part of being a delusional pad, your sense of self in the world is completely out of whack. Or is it? At a Father's Day brunch last week, my hot stepsister reminisced about writing a letter to her future self at age 12 and demanding, 'You better be beautiful by the time you read this, because right now you are UGLY!'
My mom likes to tell me that I was NOT ugly back then. I have pictures that prove otherwise.

Doggie Style part II

If you are a girl, and had an animal with four legs who barked living in your house during the pads years, you most likely have your own version of this story. The one where the pad goes in the trash and then the dog chews it up and sprinkles its remainders around the house. This was especially fun for the rest of your family, visiting friends, and and neighbors who got to pretend they didn't know what that mess of brown and white shmutz was all over the floor. But the pad's owner was always the most horrified, not only because of the act itself, but rather, 'god! why is my dog such a pervert?!'

A friend related a similar 'dog eats the pad' story from her youth. She had come home from school and found the familiar white and brown chewed up mess all over the house. She realized the mess did not actually come from her, but from her older bitch sister. While many a younger sister would seize the dirty chewed up pad as an opporunity to humiliate their older antagonizer, said friend was a nice kid and decided to simply clean it up. In the midst of doing so, the older bitch sister came home from school. With her new boyfriend. The younger sibling immediately ran to the bathroom door and slammed it on the older sibling, attempting to save her from the horrific moment of new boyfriend spying the sick act of a pervert dog.

The older sister did not like having a door slammed on her face and made every attempt to break through it in order to pounce on her younger sister's face. The younger sister screamed and pleaded for her not to come in. The older sister ignored the pleas and finally broke through, grabbing the younger sister's head and bringing it down to the floor. While the two girls rolled around on the cold linoleum, the older sister began to notice the brown and white clumps caught in her hair. "What is this shit?" shrieked the older sister. "I told you not to come in here! The dog ate your pad. I was trying to clean..." and before she could finish her sentence, the older sister shoved the younger sister's face into the cupboard.

The new boyfriend stood at the bathroom door observing the scene in its entirety. I'm not exactly sure what his reaction was. The younger sister made a point of showing all her scars and battle wounds from that afternoon rather than finishing the story. One can only assume the boyfriend either died in horror or turned gay on the spot. The dog went on to live a happy remainder of his life and even got to pose with the younger sister in one of her school portraits.

All you got is this moment / Twenty-first century's yesterday

I was talking with a childhood friend the other day about our ultimate Pads songs. We were loving life in Malibu Musk and powder fresh Always in the late ‘80s so awesomely bad music like Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl” and Phil Collins’ remake of “Groovy Kind of Love” quickly came to mind. But for me it’s hard to beat INXS’ “Need You Tonight” as the quintessential Pads tune. The opening beats of that song instantly transport me back to a humid junior high school gym in the Valley and 100 puberty-stricken girls lazily spacing themselves double arms distance apart, waiting for the “2-3-4” beat count from our P.E. teacher Mrs. Strongwater that signaled the beginning of the day’s aerobics class.

It was during my 6th grade year when Mrs. Strongwater boldly sought to combine her interests in promoting heart health, wearing leotards and being down with the kiddies and choreographed a full-length 80’s-style aerobics routine to “Need You Tonight”. Three times a week thereafter, the girls of George Ellery Hale Jr. High School side-stepped, grapevined and generally schlepped our way through Mrs. Strongwater’s bland dance steps while Michael Hutchins’ insanely sexy voice snarled in the background, “There’s something about you girl / That makes me sweat.” (Get it? Aerobics…perspiration…Mrs. Strongwater was no dummy.)

“So slide over here” – take one step to the right and sliiiide your left foot over to meet your right foot– “And give me a moment” - clap once while standing in place – “Your moves are so raw” – step forward onto the ball of your right foot and swivel your hips in what your 6th grade mind imagines is a raw and sexy motion – “I’ve got to let you know" - lunge backward with your left leg while praying that the person behind you can't see the white (or worse, red!) outline of your pad peeking out through the leg hole of your too-short polyester gym shorts - " You're one of my kind."

And therein lies the rub. At the height of our Pads-induced freakishness, it didn’t seem possible that anyone was one of my kind. To my left was the gorgeous and popular eighth grader who seemed to especially enjoy taunting me during the step-spin-step sequences with her vastly superior carnal knowledge (“I bet you don’t even know what ‘cum’ is.”). To my right, the sullen Latina bad girl who would soon become infamous for tackling Mrs. Strongwater to the ground one day during aerobics and pummeling her with punches while the rest of us robotically continued to sliiiiiiiide over here and give me a moment.

Not to be too hippied-out or anything, but it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to imagine that the universal experience of young girls getting their periods might serve as the basis for a broader sense of comraderie among us, some sort of affirmative alliance in the face of our burgeoning womanhood. Instead, that time in our lives is marred by such tremendous awkwardness and feelings of intense (and totally unnecessary) isolation. I blame it on the Pads and their fucking overhyped and ineffective dry weave. Although I suppose I could also blame it on Rick Astley. Did anything make you feel more creepy and self-conscious than listening to that guy on the radio (or worse, on a tape your Mom bought you for your birthday)?

Deconstructing Harry's Bar Mitzvah

I went to 28 Bar/Bat Mitzvahs during the 1988-1989 Bar/Bat Mitzvah season. This horrified my mother who quickly tired of buying me new dresses from Contempo Casuals and writing $18 checks to children she’d never heard of. I was neither popular nor cool but while trying to figure out my 13 year old identity, I’d managed to befriend half the planet. Looking back, it seems 28 is an unusually high number of Bar/Bat Mitzvahs to attend considering I didn’t grow up Crown Heights or Jerusalem. For every social circle I infiltrated in the West Valley, there was always a Jew – or 3.
The various clicks in junior high were not as intricately divided as they would be in high school. In junior high there were three groups – the Nerd Herd, the Popular Kids, and Everyone Else. In high school, the three groups would be subdivided and broken up (stoners, honors class stoners, jocks, future poolmen) and unlike the Indian caste system, one could elevate themselves to a higher form of human.
Bar/Bat Mitzvahs (BMs from now on) are held on Saturdays. In the morning, we were shuttled into a synagogue where depending on how religious the family was, we were forced to sit still and not giggle for a half hour anywhere up to what seemed like the rest of puberty. The BM boy/girl would step up to the bima and (poorly) read aloud from the Torah and then proceed to sing aloud in a language no-one in the room understood. What we all did understand was the cracking voice and the off-key singing that would earn this child the right to call themselves a woman or man (for the next 12 hours) and a lavish party in their honor that when all was said and done would result in horrific pictures forever capturing the most awkward time in a person’s life.
When the Torah was put away, the party began. The daytime parties were always tame. Even at that age, we knew it just wasn’t right to freak someone on the dance floor while the sun was still out. The Salisbury steak was always over-cooked. The BM’s family wasn’t as cute. There was a band, not a DJ. The really popular kids didn’t even bother showing up. But friends were extremely loyal at that age and we tried our best to show our appreciation by pretending that we were having a great fucking time and no, we didn’t just see your Great Aunt slip and fall while lighting candle number 7. What ambulance? Don’t worry, this is the coolest party ever!
I was convinced that any kid who was able to have their BM party at night was filthy rich. Cotton candy machines, not one – but two photographers, comedians serving appetizers, sketch artists drawing caricatures of kids partaking in their favorite hobbies - how could they afford such luxuries? While the adults got liquored up at the open bar, the kids got drunk on the evening’s prospective drama. By the time the second plate of chicken satay made its way around the room, someone was in the bathroom crying while a huddle of poofy dresses stood in a corner discussing the person in the bathroom crying.
Once the party got started, the rest of the night’s events fell into place like clockwork. The BM’s family marched in one at a time to the tune of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family.” They always looked so functional, so happy. They were immediately placed onto chairs and lifted into the air while the rest of the party was called onto the dance floor to clench sweaty strange hands and dance the Horah. The probability of getting stuck having a friend on one hand and some strange middle aged man on the other was high. The chance of not getting stepped on repeatedly was nil.
If the DJ was good, after the Horah, he immediately switched over to “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” This got the kids riled and sent the over 15 crowd back to their seats. Having endless amounts of energy, the hormonally challenged, acne spotted tweens controlled the dance floor for the remainder of the evening only taking a short break when the call for the old people came on with The Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” The middle aged crowd would flock to the floor and jiggle around to “Twist and Shout” and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” while the kids went outside and chased each other.
Next came the candle lighting ceremony. Favorite relatives and favorite friends were called up in clever rhymes to light their very own candle on the BM’s birthday cake. ‘Uncle Moishe, I heard back in the day you used to snort coke off of my mom’s floor, please come up and light candle number four.” I attended a distant cousin’s Bat Mitzvah in Manhattan one time. When my dad and sister and me were called up to light our candle, they played Klezmer music. Everyone else who was called up lit their candle to Mr. Wendle or Bel Biv Devoe. I was pissed.
Once the dinner portion of the evening had passed, the kids were beckoned back to the dance floor. By this time, the girls had taken off their shoes and replaced them with scrunch socks. Pepsi Cola Seven Up began and girls partnered up with cute boys and took turns sliding onto each other’s laps. The inevitable limbo contest followed. There was one very limber girl who won the limbo competition every time. Little did she or the rest of us know that this is where she would peak in life, under the limbo pole.
The rest of the night was a blur. Carpool came to pick you up sometime after the DJ started to shut down. They usually got you home in time to catch the last fifteen minutes of SNL. A night of excess and glamour was left as a memory to be cherished forever only to be repeated the following Saturday. Hopefully Saturday night.

....Surprise!!

I recently attended a surprise party where the guest of honor walked in to a room full of people staring at him. He stared back. Blankly. This went on for an uncomfortably long time, until the guests started to move away from him, backing themselves against the wall while the guest of honor continued to stare. Finally a drunk person screamed out, 'Isn't anyone going to yell surprise!?' and the party continued where it had left off before the catatonic guest of honor walked in staring.
My mom threw me a 'surprise' party for one of my pads birthdays. I think it was for the big one, 13. I had spent the night at my frienemy's house, a girl I had gone from calling my best friend to a fucking cunt back to a best friend on a bi-monthly basis. This frienemy lived with a fat hunched over beast who would regularly close you in the frienemy's bedroom while the two of them went into the living room and rolled around on the floor punching, kicking, yelling and screaming at each other. The frienemy had a subscription to Rolling Stone and I would usually get through the first half of the magazine before the frienemy came back into the room to play again. The frienemy also had an older sister who had a fetish for sleeping with foreign exchange students. Sometimes while the frienemy was out fighting the beast, the sister would come in the room and entertain me with stories of her sexual escapades. I didn't mind the stories and listened intently while she rambled on about Dirf and Hipolite and how Norwegians really know how to do it. The frienemy was not happy with this. She would come in mid-tale and throw something at the sister's face and chase her out of the room.
On one spring morning, the frienemy and I were picked up from her house and taken to mine. She was acting strange, as was my mom who greeted us and immediately tried to shuffle us into the backyard. I did as told and stepped outside. A voice or two from above screamed out a half-hearted 'surprise!' and a dixie cup full of water was poured on my head. I looked up and saw two losers sitting on my balcony staring at me. My first thought was, 'why the hell are they here?' Then it occured to me that this must be a surprise party. For me. Cuz it's my birthday. As the blue eyeliner streaked down my face, I put together all the clues that led to this joyous moment. While I was at the frienemy's house my mom went through my phone book and dialed up my friends and told them to come over. Only she didn't realize that the friends she dialed were from last year and that this year we weren't hanging out much. Awkward.
Another loser popped out from the bathroom and suddenly the party ballooned to 5. Everyone put on their swim suits and jumped into the pool. Everyone but me, because I was menstruating for fuck's sake and it just couldn't get any more cliche. While everything sucks during the pads years, surprise parties suck especially hard. And that my friends is the end.

Pads - doggie style

When I think about the Pads years, it all goes back to that feeling of trying *so* hard to be cool - all the while trying *so* hard to act like you're not, in fact, trying so hard to be cool. And really just failing miserably at the whole effort. If I were a dog during the Pads years, this would be my sixth grade class picture:

The Pads Experience

Do you ever experience a queasy sort of self-consciousness where you feel the world around you has suddenly frozen and you're left alone to ponder monologue style to the invisible documentarian we all imagine is filming our lives, "Ohmygod, is this really happening?" Remember when you were 13 and that vomitous sense of unease was all that you were capable of feeling? (You're going to have to reach back to before the time when extreme and uncontrollable horniness was all that your teenage self was capable of feeling). We call that feeling – and really that entire time in your life or any song, movie, person or conversation capable of inspiring that feeling - pads. Because when you're wandering the halls of junior high as one big zit set adrift on a sea of Aqua Net, and you've just been blessed with that glorious life sentence of bleeding from the cunt, there's nothing like the powder-fresh chafing of a maxi-pad crammed in between your legs to make you feel…is it possible?…more awkward.

Like survivors of some terrible tragedy, we find there's solace in sharing our pads memories. This blog contains 3 girls' accounts of those moments that for us will forever be recalled as "That's so pads."