You want me to get WHAT?

I thought I had been through it all when I had lived with a member of the opposite sex before. I was wrong. SO VERY WRONG.

One night, Kelz announced to me, "You need to run to the store and buy me some tampons. RIGHT NOW!" This kind of freaked me out. I'd never bought tampons for anyone before. I mean, I'd purchased tampons once for someone and when we went grocery shopping, Chez was always certain to stock up, but I'd never had to buy them all by myself. (And there was that one time that Chez, Joad and I had driven up to Carlsbad, CA to buy a video game at a Sound Warehouse. We arrived and were about to get out of the car. Chez said, "We can't go in." "Why not?" Chez pointed at her pants. There was a blood stain on her jeans near her crotch. THIS freaked me out. But the way Chez acted the five months we were living together, I'm surprised that all her jeans didn't have blood stains on them.)

Even though we'd been grocery shopping before, and even though Kelz had requested to buy some make up, I guess it never occurred to her to buy tampons because she hadn't had a period since she gave birth just a couple of months prior. However, I don't know how you'd forget about that time of the month starting back up again.

Because Kelz could not leave the house in her condition, I had to venture into unexplored territory: The feminine hygiene section of Lucky. I walked around the store for awhile. I was not about to ask anyone where the tampons were. Seriously, this was embarrassing for me. I finally got to the section and found an ENTIRE WALL full of products. I was overwhelmed, much like Robin Williams was in "Moscow on the Hudson" when he goes to get coffee.

Kelz did not tell me what brand she used, and we didn't have cell phones or texting back then. The store was going to close in 15 minutes, so I had a limited amount of time to figure out what I needed to get and buy it. All of a sudden, I was trying to remember all the TV commercials regarding tampons I had seen over the last quarter century, but never paid attention to because they never applied to me. I was looking to see if any brand names stuck out in my head as being the most reliable, the most absorbent, the most cost-effective.

Time was slipping. I grabbed one box marked "tampons" and went to the register. (At least I knew not to get the pads.) I didn't know if the woman who was cashiering was going to say anything. But she acted like a professional, scanned the package and took my money.

Even though it took less than five minutes to drive back to the apartment, I dreaded what I might find when I arrived. I was afraid there would be blood stains on the carpet, on the bedsheets, and the toilet. Fortunately, it was none of that. I gave the box to Kelz and she said, "Good choice." I breathed a sigh of relief.

The near panic attack I experienced was the price I paid for not having had a lot of girlfriends. I've been fortunate that I've never had to do that again.