My background - Asian and Roman Catholic. And I’m in my late 30s. The first draft of my 20000 word dissertation was hand written. Internet was mainly MSN messenger. My mum was adopted by a single female doctor - a forensic psychologist who then went on to study the brains of dead people. This was in the 1950s in Asia. My grandmother was amazing but she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. And neither did my mum.
I never got the birds and the bees talk. I remember asking if I could use tampons when I was about 16-17 (it became popular in my friendship group for some reason). My mum said only married people could use tampons.
Whatever I’m a cool kid so I didn’t listen (I was naive but not stupid) and I wore tampons but I also wasn’t given a period talk beyond a quick intro from school when I was about 10 years old (I had my first period maybe at 11 and my mum just passed me a pad, didn’t have another one for ages and was in secondary school by then and had peers to talk to) - and my best friend had a similar upbringing so Dumb and Dumber inserted a new tampon after each trip to the toilet. And both wore sanitary towels with our tampons because (and I know this now) we weren’t inserting them properly. Just assumed we were bleeding through cos we had heavy periods. Anyways, luckily the novelty ran out and the tampon phase quickly died out (lucky we didn’t die out!).
Fast forward to 2008-2009. I’ve just purchased my own place and excited to furnish it. I’m trying to work out my budget and figure out what all the various bed and mattress options are - my mum tells me that only married people can have a double bed. I told her I’m probably not getting married (I was right) and that I was not going to sleep in a single bed for the rest of my life. And that was that.
I never got the birds and the bees talk. I remember asking if I could use tampons when I was about 16-17 (it became popular in my friendship group for some reason). My mum said only married people could use tampons.
Whatever I’m a cool kid so I didn’t listen (I was naive but not stupid) and I wore tampons but I also wasn’t given a period talk beyond a quick intro from school when I was about 10 years old (I had my first period maybe at 11 and my mum just passed me a pad, didn’t have another one for ages and was in secondary school by then and had peers to talk to) - and my best friend had a similar upbringing so Dumb and Dumber inserted a new tampon after each trip to the toilet. And both wore sanitary towels with our tampons because (and I know this now) we weren’t inserting them properly. Just assumed we were bleeding through cos we had heavy periods. Anyways, luckily the novelty ran out and the tampon phase quickly died out (lucky we didn’t die out!).
Fast forward to 2008-2009. I’ve just purchased my own place and excited to furnish it. I’m trying to work out my budget and figure out what all the various bed and mattress options are - my mum tells me that only married people can have a double bed. I told her I’m probably not getting married (I was right) and that I was not going to sleep in a single bed for the rest of my life. And that was that.