Stick Up For Your Uterus!

Commentary

It's the week before final exams. You keep brushing you hair out of your face as it sweeps across your nose, which is pointing directly into a history book. There is a kid three seats down from you who has his ears plugged with headphones so he can't hear anything else going on in the library. Good for him, because all everyone else can hear in the silent library is his electronic Ratatat music blaring.

You keep giving the young man across the table the eye. Not the "meet me in the conference room" eye--the "I'm gonna’ rip that kids headphones out of his ears and hang him from the light" eye. Finally, after three songs of bass and pencil tapping, the kid gets up and approaches the jamming student.

He stands next to the music man's seat until he looks up, smiles, and unplugs an ear. The music gets louder and the crowd in the room sighs, drops their arms from holding up their heads, turns and waits to get a silent night.

"Hey man," Your teammate says.

He removes his other headphone, "What did you say, man? Sorry, I couldn't hear you."

Insisting some quiet time, the boy from across the table explains that everyone else can hear his music because he doesn't want to hear everyone else in the library--seeing how they all are making so much noise reading and typing away at their computers.

The inconsiderate near deaf music man looks up at your teammate, "Geeze man, take some Midol. Knock that PMS out of your system!"

They laugh together. You are now aggravated with both of them.

For as long as I can remember, even way back from before I had gotten my first period, I can recall the boys thinking they were so hysterically funny by making the "PMS Joke". I think the joke is that the majority of young men making these jokes don't even know what PMS stands for! It is certainly nothing to joke about. To them, it may just mean the lead up to a week of no sexual relations with their girlfriend, lover, or even wife. And when in reality, at our young age, they should be grateful their partner is becoming quite irritated. This Premenstrual Syndrome leads to the week of hell, visit from Mother Nature, the feeling of relief for women who are trying to get sexy and sassy but not bring another life into our crazy world (which is apparently filled with not funny jokes).

But, really, there is no joke about PMS. Not at all! It makes everyone around you have an attitude problem; women find themselves adding chocolate chips to their burgers; it makes it seem like an entire woman’s wardrobe has shrunk; women feel it necessary to answer the “how’s my driving?” bumper stickers with angry phone calls to the toll free numbers; everyone’s face seems like a good place to leave some stress (and a mark); women question whether there is a “god” and decide if there is he is clearly male; menopause seems like the honeymoon after the wedding to womanhood; women are convinced there is a world wide scheme to make them miserable; and it just to happens that the bottle of Midol they bought yesterday is already empty. It may seem funny, like the world is out to get women down, but it’s truly not.

Premenstrual Syndrome is literally the opposite of a joke. It’s hell on earth, trapped inside the bodies of women. It layers itself through pelvic areas and tries to read it’s demonic hands through the skin sending cramps through the body and women to their beds. It brings head aches like a man wouldn’t believe—literally! Men do not experience pain the way women do, however the men may be complaining more when they are in pain.

So, next time you hear a PMS joke, and it pisses you off, release the real woman in you—the woman that is there all the time, every day of every month. The woman that can be miserable whenever she wants and withstand pain like no man on earth! Stick up for your Uterus and Uterus’ around the world!