The First Time I Put A Whoopie Cushion Against My Bare Ass and Other Firsts

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Starting a new job has left me feeling creatively drained, so I’ve been turning to inspirational websites to get me out of my rut. One writing exercise I came across is writing down a list of your firsts. So that is exactly what I did…

The First Time I Put A Whoopie Cushion Against My Bare Ass
When I was ten years-old, I came up with an ingenious idea- to put a whoopie cushion IN my underwear and sit on it in a public area. By putting it in my underwear, no one would see the whoopie cushion and think I had the most massive farts on the planet- obviously. I attempted this trick at a garage sale my Grandmother was having. I waited for peak customer foot traffic and strategically placed a chair amidst the hairless Chia Pets and romance novels. I then ran behind a bush, blew up my whoopie cushion, and stuck it in my underwear. Knowing that no one was looking at my ten-year-old bubble butt, I walked up to the chair with near paralyzing anticipation and sat down. What I dreamed of happening did not occur, and not having any space to let the air out, the whoopie cushion decided to blow up against my bare ass. I shot into the air like an arrow and started screaming like a, well, ten year-old child. I pulled the flaccid rubber out of my pants and noticed what looked like a tiny dynamite-induced hole in the center of the whoopie cushion. For three days I had a giant welt on my buttocks and that was the first and only time I put a whoopie cushion next to my bare skin.

The First Time I Used a Tampon
Chronicled in my blog post, ‘A Brutally Embarrassing Coming-Of-Age Story‘, this tale still haunts me to this day. My mother obviously tried to keep me as a five year-old child, so she never taught me how to use a tampon. For years, I’d wear gigantic maxi pads- even while swimming. It seriously looked like I had a penis once those puppies soaked up water and I climbed out of the pool. When I was around sixteen and working at Centini’s Italian restaurant in Ithaca, NY, my period surprised ambushed and I soon discovered that most NORMAL people don’t use maxi pads. A co-worker handed me her ‘extra super-duper absorbant’ tampon and I went into the bathroom completely perplexed as to what to do. Surely this scratchy insulation-esque stopper can’t go ALL the way inside my vag! So, being the resourceful girl that I was, I put the tampon in only halfway and worked the rest of the evening with what felt like glass protruding from my cootch.When I came home battered and cringing, my mother of course thought it was hilarious that her neglect in showing me how TO BE A REAL WOMAN caused me to exercise such comical thinking. And for that Mom, I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU.

His name was Adam and he was 16 and my best friend and 310 pounds and funny and sweet. We spent a lot of time together and I knew something was blossoming when he held my hand on a roller coaster ride during our band trip to Hershey Park. After a long awkward courtship that included him professing his love to me while The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” played and me rejecting him, we finally got together and I was smitten. So smitten that I wrote his name on my fingernails. I got an airbrushed t-shirt with our faces painted on it. We made out in his two-door Chrysler. He slept over and I forced him to watch countless episodes of Kids in the Hall, Twin Peaks, and Talking Heads’ music videos. It was the perfect relationship. Except for one day, when it wasn’t. Of course that doesn’t mean we didn’t try to beat a dead horse for another three years. Adam is now happily married with a son and another child on the way and living in Kansas City…and I am so happy that I am not.
 
The First Time I Saw a Mangled Dead Body
I had just moved to Los Angeles and was selected to be a seat filler at the Screen Actors Guild Awards at Shrine Auditorium downtown. I was with two other girls and we decided to carpool. As we descended upon interstate 110 that snakes through downtown LA, we came to a complete standstill. Noticing off in the distance that traffic was bottle-necking to one lane, we searched our surroundings to see what the hold-up was. On the overpass above some cops were hanging out having a cigarette, same as on the shoulder. An ambulance stood off on the right and no one seemed to be anxious or active. Except for us, when we finally spotted the DEAD BODY LYING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE INTERSTATE. We soon discovered that a gentleman had decided to end his life by jumping from the overpass onto the seven-lane highway below. Seeing a blood-soaked sheet with arms and sneakers protruding from underneath is not a memory that escapes you, but luckily that was the only time I ever saw such a thing.

Tell me about some of your firsts….