Reasons to be happy you're an old

I was talking to my friend since high school about her 12-year-old son, whose birth I was there for when I was still a club girl. Ok, that's only technically true: I went to the hospital around 9 p.m. on New Year's Eve 1996, dressed in my black fetish clothes before club time and hung out in her room for a while. Her husband, who shares my last name but is not related to me, held her hand and watched the monitor as her contractions intensified. The doctor came in to give her an epidural and I stepped out. The scream I heard from inside that room as that needle was applied scared me more than any horror movie I've ever seen, and I fled and went to the club to ring in the new year, returning at mid-day to introduce myself to the world's newest Frink.

Anyhoo, we were talking about how handsome the boy has become and the awkwardness he's going through during his adolescence. She said his voice is starting to break and that he's mortified.

"Yeah?," I said, "At least he doesn't have to get a period."

"Thank you!," my friend replied.

It's not that we didn't have sympathy for the boy, as adolescence is hard enough on everyone and we want to protect the little ones.

But come on, people. Getting a first period is worse than anything any boy could ever go through: including the boy I knew our freshman year in high school who was the drum major in the marching band and whose voice broke audibly on the football field during "Atten-hut!" That "hut" went right up the music scale, off the charts and into the stratosphere, resulting in the band falling out laughing. And the band was made up of huge geeks: I played last-chair flute.

That's nothing. There is nothing in the world that is worse than being an adolescent girl, feeling gawky, awkward and insecure about every aspect of her life, greeting good old painful Aunt Flo for the first time.

I was onstage in my leotards, ballet shoes and my first perm, dancing to "Ice Castles" in a recital when she came around for the first time. I also went on, as it was the 80s, to experience the horror of the white-pants-with-a-jacket-around-the-waist-at-school thing.

I'd like to say those incidents made me stronger; perhaps they did because only now, 20+ years later, I can laugh about them as a rite of passage. But good lord, I'm glad they're behind me and I never have to go through them (or bad skin, perms or mean redneck girls) again.

Friends of LA, tell me about your awkward coming-of-womanhood (or manhood) moments. Post anonymously if it gives you more boldness. :)