Tell Me Your Funny/Embarrassing Period Stories

Periods are kind of funny, and I’m tired of pretending they’re not.

I’m considered a pretty funny woman; I navigate the—sometimes pretty bleak—the world through jokes and humour. Is giggling through life considered a defense mechanism? Maybe, but I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon. I’ve laughed in inopportune times, doctor’s appointments, funerals, etc. and I’m under the belief that it is very little we can’t laugh about as long as you’re approaching a subject empathetically and with good nature.

I think that we as people have decided most bodily functions are pretty funny…how many “I farted in front of my crush” or “I had diarrhea at an important function” stories have you heard? I’ve definitely laughed at my fair share of “I didn’t know I had a booger in my nose during a job interview” kind of stories. People love to make others laugh so hard that they pee their pants, but man, you bring up a big period stain on your white pants, and people tend to seem less-than-eager to talk about it. Why?

Do we shy away from periods because they come from a vagina? We tend to find penises pretty funny, but vaginas are taken more seriously, the same way we love to draw penises everywhere, but vaginas aren’t as funny to draw in the dirt on car windows? Menstrual blood is arguably less off-putting than poop or puke, but poop and puke are considered hilarious!

Well, I’m here to say that I think periods are super funny! So many of my most embarrassing and silly coming-of-age stories come from my vagina and the miracle of menstruation! I’m going to share a few here, so hopefully, you can have a good laugh, maybe cringe a bit, and maybe even feel comfortable laughing at menstruation as well. By sharing our own funny menstruation stories, we can normalize talking about and laughing at our periods.

This one is for all of my people with periods out there! 

The Mouse Story

My dad has always been a pretty pro-woman kind of guy. Yes, it took him a while to come around to a few issues surrounding feminism and women’s rights, but his foundation is definitely there. He’s bought plenty of tampons and pads (I still remember when he bought me pads for the first time, he bought such heavy-duty pads that I couldn’t walk properly wearing one), he’s woken up in a puddle of blood from my mom and never complained, and he’s never been one of those weirded-out-by-periods guys which is good because he has three daughters.

One day, when I was sixteen, I had just come home from school and sat on my toilet to change my tampon. I had just taken the tampon out and thrown it in the trash when I saw something moving under the sink. The house my family used to live in when I was in high school would get mice in the winter, and occasionally you would see them run by, and despite having pet rats, mice really freak me out. There I was on the toilet, vulnerable and bleeding when my eyes focused under the sink and a tiny brown mouse was staring back at me!

I jumped up and yelped, yanking my pants on as I stumbled through the bathroom door, just trying to get away from the poor little rodent. My dad, who was standing in the living room that the bathroom was connected to sprang into action and ran into the bathroom to see what was going on.

Because of the commotion, the mouse was long gone and instead my dad was greeted with a toilet bowl full of blood and blood dripping on the toilet seat, the floor, and the bathroom carpet from my great escape!

“Ugh, Morgan,” is all he said as he walked out of the bathroom, distancing himself from the scene of the crime. Boy was my face redder than the toilet bowl when I remembered why I was in the bathroom in the first place!

The Lonely Pad Story

I got my period pretty late compared to my friends. It wasn’t until I was fifteen that I finally got my first period, and I spent most of high school wearing pads because I felt super intimidated by tampons. I was fifteen, and I was in my grade ten geography class and on my period; I had a shoulder bag full of pads because I always packed my school bag like I had ten periods at once.

At some point or other, whether it be when I took out my homework, or my binder, or my pencil case, a pad was knocked out of my bag and onto the floor. Eventually, I looked down and to my horror noticed the bright green wrapping of one of my pads laying near my desk. As a new period-haver, I was so mortified, and I really didn’t want anyone to notice the pad or God forbid, know it was mine!

I started trying to slowly and quietly pull the pad with my foot closer and closer to me so I could scoop it up under the desk and successfully hide the pad back in my bag, but it was too late. My teacher—who was definitely a character—had already noticed the pad and had pointed it out to a few of my male peers!

“Whose is this?” he asked rhetorically, laughing with the boys. (I want to elaborate here that my teacher wasn’t a bad guy, and didn’t mean any harm, I actually really liked him. He was just super tone-deaf and immature!) My teacher started kicking the pad around like the world’s flattest soccer ball to the kids’ amusement in the class. He then kicked the pad out of the open classroom door and into the hallway! 

I was pretty mortified back then, but now I think it’s hilarious! I also think that my teacher was totally doing me a solid, nobody knew the pad was mine, and I got out of there scot-free!

The Bloody New York Story

My first—and only—trip to New York City was when I was seventeen. I had super irregular periods until I was on birth control when I was eighteen, so my vagina was pretty much the wild-wild-west during that time in my life.

My best friend’s dad had taken us to NYC for three days in the summer, it was August, and it was boiling hot. I’m a chunky gal, and I have very thick thighs, and I sweat like crazy when I’m walking around in the heat, so it was no surprise that by the middle of our day walking around New York my thighs were drenched in sweat, and my legs were very wet. I thought to myself how smart I was for wearing a short skirt instead of pants. I liked getting air on my sweaty legs.

After a few hours, we finally broke for lunch, and I was able to go to the bathroom in Chelsea market. When I sat on the toilet, I realized that the “sweat” all over my legs was blood! My underwear, my skirt, my thighs, they were all covered in blood. Travelling with my best friend who was a boy, his brother, and his dad, I don’t know if they genuinely didn’t notice or didn’t want to tell me, but I wasn’t about to ask!

I cleaned up the best I could, made a makeshift pad out of toilet paper, and then proceeded to go to the MoMA with bloodstained thighs and a wad of public bathroom toilet paper the size of a baseball in my underwear. Still, I wasn’t about to miss any of New York on account of my period!

I hope you had a good laugh while reading this because I laughed while writing it. Objectively, periods are hilarious, and they make us do funny things while we endure them. I hope we can one day openly laugh about our periods without stigma because periods are funny! Period!

Feel free to share some of your stories in the comments, or share them with a friend today!