embarrassment

There are many things I love about adulthood. One of them is the regression of the acute embarrassment about everything that plagued adolescence.

Just a minor example. The other night I headed to Wal-Mart, and while I was shopping, my cell rang from its place in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out -- with a tampon. Tampons seem to be dotted about my person in various random and strangely prominent places where I don't remember putting them: jacket pockets, purse pockets, jeans pockets, piled on top of my work bag. I never know when one is going to materialize, but at least one is always handy.

So in the open view of the public, I opened the cell to pick up the call while moving the tampon nonchalantly, and still in clear view, to the other hand, began talking, and, without bothering to hide what I was doing or what I was holding, put the tampon back from whence it came (in the jacket pocket. Doubtless the event will happen again). From the corner of my eye I saw a man staring at me the entire time.

Was I bothered? Not a whit. Was I embarrassed? Not even a little.

Ten years ago I would have shriveled up into a scrunchy little raisin and died of horror. I invented all kinds of clever ways of disguising the fact that I was going to the girls' room with a tampon. I slipped them up my sleeves. I hid them in the waistband of my jeans. I tucked them down my collar. Anything -- anything -- to avoid carrying my bookbag to the bathroom with me. And ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING to avoid that little plastic-wrapped cylinder from sliding into visibility.

Today? Whatever. Yup, there it is. Tampon. Right next to the spare change, the paper clip, the Kleenex, and the cell. Oh, did you see it fall out of my pocket? Yeah, hey there.