Pan-Handling For Tampons

Today, Rosi and I decided to visit the High Museum of Art.

So we headed off, gluten-free snacks and ipods in tow, trussed up for a day on the town. We found the museum on our second try, made it into the parking garage (we are both horrendous with directions), and after some season-pass confusion got our tickets and stopped by the ladies room before losing ourselves in the wonderfully sublime and elite joy of fine art.

It was in the ladies room that the going got tough. And it would happen to me: stuck in the middle of down-town Atlanta, my purse naively empty of tampons, and me in desperate need of something to staunch my feminine flow.

“Rosi….?”

Of course she didn’t have one. But there was, thankfully, one of those bathroom vending machines selling tampons for a quarter. Neither of us had a quarter. But the kind man watching the coat-room gave Rosi a quarter which the machine duly ingested, and kept, failing to produce the promised tampon.

“We’ll just have to find a Walgreens or something. Come on.”

I guiltily hemmed and hawed over this suggestion, not wanting to ruin our afternoon by searching for a tampon, but I really didn’t have much of an option. Mother Nature calls. On the way out of the ladies room I stopped a friendly-looking woman and asked if she would happen to have any sort of feminine product. “Sorry, no.” Same answer from the next lady I waylaid as we left the museum.

Hoping for some sort of brilliant miracle, like a sudden heavenly shower of tampons, we made our way across the street to Starbucks. Maybe it would have a vending machine. Maybe it would have friendly ladies carrying big purses stuffed with tampons.

I checked the Bathroom while Rosi bought us this-sucks-but-at-least-we-can-have-an-adventure-and -drink-Starbucks consolation coffees. No luck in the bathroom. So I turned to scout out the patrons. Now, I am from Asheville. I am used to slightly-sketchy people randomly asking for money, but I suddenly realized that it takes a lot of nerve to ask a complete stranger to shell out anything. At least I wasn’t straight-up asking for money, and had the universal “Women-Law” as justification for my actions. After all, every woma knows that it doesn’t matter who she is or how much you hate her, when another woman asks for a tampon, you give it! And really, all the ladies I asked were quite nice, though sadly lacking in tampons.

Finally, one of the Starbucks ladies directed me a to a bathroom in the shopping center which she thought might have one of those vending machines. It did. Sweet relief! Only this machine wouldn’t even take the quarter, let alone deliver a tampon. Ladies, I have decided that those vending machines are a thing of the devil! They lure innocent women into calm complacency and then, “Wham!” when she needs support most, she’s flat on her butt.

I was reaching panic-stage, not sure how much longer my jeans could hold out, randomly stopping women between stores, all of whom gave the same answer: “Sorry, no.”

I saw it then, a tiny little convenience store almost like a gas-station, “Oasis” in florescent pink letters. Aptly named. I’ve never been that happy to see the familiar row of little pink boxes, even if I did get robbed of five bucks for eight measly tampons.

We finally made it back to the High. And the art was pretty good. But I think my favorite part of the day was getting a picture in front of the Starbucks, clutching a box of tampons in the middle of Atlanta.

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