The X-Rated Stuff

"Did you remind Teri to get my Stuff?"

"You needed Stuff? What Stuff?" Does Stuff have a definition? Am I supposed to know what Stuff she's talking about? She said it as if I should know, which only added to my confusion. I need specific names. I mean, we have a lot of stuff, car stuff, kid stuff, unspeakable stuff.

"No, he didn't." Teri answers for me in my confusion. She knew what Stuff was. Why didn't I?

"It's okay, I have Stuff with me you can have," Sarah answers from the backseat of the car. Even she knows the meaning of Stuff. Why am I not getting this?

Finally, the dark is driving me nuts and I want let in on stuff. "What Stuff? You didn't tell me to get Stuff. I would have remembered the word stuff."

The girls shake their collective heads, which means each one pities me at the moment. It's a feeling I hate, but which I should be used to. "Yes I did," Char answers. "I reminded you to have Teri grab some personal items for me before you picked me up." So Stuff equals Personal Items, which really didn't shed light on my darkness. I thought I should at least get points for remembering to pick her up, but that was denied me in lieu of forgetting the Stuff. So, I drove on wondering what Personal Stuff got left behind.

It was almost like the George Carlin routine on stuff, except that his stuff was general, encompassing all the meaningless junk we burden our lives down with. This, however, was specific Stuff and, on top of that, Personal. It wasn't as if she was saying, "Man, we have a lot of stuff." No, this was more like she was whispering about something illegal. I could picture her in the shadows, leaning over and talking out the side of her mouth. "Hey, did you bring the stuff?"

"What Stuff?!" I finally screamed and then wished I had just ignored the whole thing as they were only talking about tampons. Why they just didn't say that is a mystery. Obviously someone had started their "girlie" and was unprepared. They refer to it now as their girlie making sure I knew I couldn't get it, and that it was a female right allowing them to be moody three weeks out of the month. They also use the term “broken” as if somehow it can be fixed, which makes me think they’re a lot like my car, temperamental. Of course, these things do sneak up on women and always at the most embarrassing moments, like skinny dipping or on that first one night stand. You'd think there would be a predictable cycle or something or that they had learned in the Girl Scouts to always be prepared.

Still, it only showed how people are always trying to pretty up or cover embarrassing terms. Of course, I didn't realize that tampons were one of those subjects that people preferred not to talk about until I was sent to buy some. I stood there staring at the blue and purple boxes wondering, "What if someone sees me buying these? They might think I'm on my girlie!" Of course, it didn't matter that I had the wrong body parts in order to need tampons, which led me to wonder why we say "body parts" or "privates." We simply cannot use the terms penis or vagina not to mention the other terms for our genitals. I was going to write "cock" up above instead of "penis" but the girls were against it.

"What if your mother reads it?" Of course, they weren't worried about our kids reading the word because they use it in their Facebook statuses on a regular basis.

"My mom's been married for forty-six years and has had two kids. I'm sure she's familiar with the term." 

"But she hasn't heard it from you." At that point the whole conversation became awkward and I excused myself to the meditation room, which is the nice way to say the shitter, another word that needs beautification. I think it's anything that has something to do with anything between the waist and the upper thighs that people need to cutesy up. I can't blame them, really. It would be weird to hear my mom say, "I'm going to take a dump." Potty works for little kids as well as the elderly. Of course, I have no idea where this whole number two nonsense came from. I mean, who decided that taking a piss was number one and a crap was number two?

Still, decent society has standards and while we know that everyone does these natural bodily functions, they are not to be discussed. I'm not even sure why we gave them their formal names anyway. We can't say them and we buy extra items just to cover up the box of condoms we've slipped on the conveyor belt under the celery sticks hoping the cashier won't notice. It’s as if we’re afraid she’s going to hold up the box of lubed balloons and announce over the loud speaker, “Some has high hopes tonight!”

Therefore, I think all things that are in anyway connected to those functions - toilet paper, tampons, and Spider Man underwear - should be shipped to us monthly in plain brown wrapped packages. The neighbors will think we're getting porn in the mail and never know that it's really a case of Charmin you'll be squeezing later that night. And really, copping to being addicted to porn is less embarrassing than people knowing what I prefer to wipe my ass with.

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