Cramps

We were late starters then. I had my second kiss in the sixth grade. We began kissing, then, the adventurous ones. Bad kids, I guess. But there was a clear line between kissing and French kissing. I would not have the latter for awhile.

We didn't know much about anatomy. What we knew came from a stack of Playboy magazines that one of the kids' father had. It was dangerous, but we'd sneak over to his house when no one was around and look at them. Since there were no shots below the waist, we used to argue about what was there. One of the kids with an older brother astounded us, and nobody believed him.

One day during our usual play period, the boys and girls were separated into groups, the boys going out to play kickball, the girls being herded into the cafeteria. "Hey, what's going on Mr. Roach," we asked. He was the only male teacher in our school. He taught sixth grade and kept us pretty much in line most of the time. Roach just gave us a stern look and wouldn't tell us anything except to get out there and play. Of course, we were all curious to an illegal degree. The windows of the cafeteria had been covered and a couple of the boys tried to sneak over to look in, but they were dealt with quickly and strongly.

After play period, the girls marched back to our room looking straight ahead without talking, clutching little paper pamphlets in their arms, guarding them like valuables about to be stolen in a crowd. "Hey, hey, what'd ya do, huh, what'd ya do?" we begged, but not one of them would say anything. We tried to bargain for one of the pamphlets, but our attempts were useless. Something strange and terrible had happened, and we were determined to know.

A few days later, one of the guys told us that they had been shown a film about their private parts. "Girls have periods," he said. "My mother has them all the time." And then we got our own confusing explanation of the process.

One day, Jeanette left school in the middle of the day. "What happened to Jeanette?" we asked. "She had cramps," our new, young teacher just out of college told us. She was beautiful and caused every boy a sweet agony whenever she erased the board.

Allen and I thought it would be a great treat to go home in the middle of day, so we told our teacher we were sick. "What's wrong?" she asked. Cramps.

I remember her sniggering when she took us to the office to tell the principal, and I remember his mysterious smile, too. "OK," he said, "put them in the infirmary." And we were taken to a place I'd not seen before, a little block room with two cots in it. Allen and I were told to lie there until we felt better, and no talking. It took about five minutes for us to heal and be marched back to our classroom.

Jeanette. She was the first girl in our class to have breasts. I will tell a story about how she almost got me beaten later.