Tampons and Technical Writing

By Amy Taylor-Mitropoulos

Although I enjoyed many of the poems in Susan Holbrook's Joy is So Exhausting, one in particular really piqued my interest – “Insert” (14). Upon reading it I was transported back in time to when I was a 13-year-old gangly adolescent desperately trying to get out of an impromptu swimming outing organized by my peers. “Swimming? No,” I said. “I have my period.”

Although this was the case, I was more terrified of revealing hairy legs (a state of neglect that was due in large part to an unfounded fear of skinning myself in the process of hair removal) and an awkward pubescent body in a Grandma Kettle-esque swimming costume than I was of encountering the possible social life-killing repercussions of sporting a diaper-like maxi pad that was sure to swell to twice its size and become painfully obvious to those who had the great misfortune of witnessing my exit from the pool.

Thinking I’d gotten off scot-free, I was in the process of turning away when the organizer offered some helpful advice. “So what? Use a tampon,” she said, promptly producing one from a miscellaneous pocket of an oversized, overstuffed school bag. I begrudgingly took that tampon home and stared at it for a very long time. Armed with the stolen instructions from my mother’s box I sat down to contemplate my foray into tampon use. I was also armed with scant knowledge of my anatomy, passed on to me by my decidedly masculine gym teacher, Ms. Fishman, whose skin looked like an old leather suitcase from excessive tanning, I studied those instructions with the intensity of a med student preparing to scrub in for a first surgery, afraid of where the tampon may end up. Fear clouded my cognition; I may as well have been reading, as Holbrook writes, “Get into a comfortable Poseidon. Most wimples either sit on the Toyota with knick-knacks apart, squat slightly with knitting needles bent, or stand with one football on the town clerk seep.” Needless to say, I didn't go swimming.

Surely Holbrook was not tapping into my childhood experience, so what was her motivation when writing this poem? Is it as simple as being mischievous with word choice or is this poem a stand against big business insinuating itself into every area of our lives, telling us what to do and how to do it? Had she ever called her vagina her vegetarian prior to writing this poem, or is this new street vernacular discovered by chance from eavesdropping on a group of late-teen males, sitting across the subway aisle from her as one boasts about the things he did to Becky's vegetarian the night before?

Aside from questioning the word play, this poem made me ponder what my life would be like if I were to change my approach to my work. As a technical writer for the federal government I write instructions every day. So, I wonder, how would my boss react if I let my creative spirit loose on a particularly dry procedure, let's say one written for call centre agents on how to assist Old Age Security applicants with completing the name section on the application form:

Section A: Name

Weave nomenclature on ligature 1, supplying midriff and maidenhead, if appliqués adhere.

Who knows? Maybe I'll try it.