Ample helpings of TMI all around; come on in and help yourself

First of all--I know! Three posts in one day?? Frankly, I'm as surprised as you are, so I can offer no adequate explanation. Look out; you might want to duck right now; I think I see a winged pig swooping in a little low.

Anyway, I have things to tell you. And by, "things to tell you," I mean I've had a mortifying and awkward moment, and rather than quietly internalize it and wish it away, I thought I'd go ahead and publish it on the Internet. Sounds reasonable, eh?

Before you proceed, I should warn you that this post at least marginally concerns lady parts, and if you're a real-life friend of the male persuasion, you may just want to skip this one. (As for the Internet-only friends of the male persuasion who might be reading this right now? Eh. If you're trolling blogs on a regular basis, this probably won't phase you too much.)

And with that warning, away we go.

I was just having an innocent little chat with my boss, wherein I inquired how her new college freshman daughter is enjoying school (at my alma matter) so far. That innocent little chat somehow unexpectedly segued into revelations about said daughter's sex life (or her mother's hope for a lack thereof), which segued into a report, per my boss's doctor, that there is now a vaccine available for a few particularly prevalent and pesky STDs. According to my boss's doctor, they are apparently recommending this vaccine for kids as young as nine(!) to twelve(!) and upwards to twenty-six.

Now, a normal adult individual, in conversation with the person who monitors and controls her employment, would show the proper level of shock at the "nine years old?!" comment and quickly move along. Me, however? The apparently far-from-normal and always blunt and inappropriate woman who's nearly always got too much to say? That woman didn't stop right there. Instead, she proceeded with, "Huh. I go to Planned Parenthood instead of a regular clinic for my annual exams. It's funny they haven't mentioned that or had posters about it there."

What's that I just said? Oh yeah; let's hear it again. "I go to Planned Parenthood for my annual exams."

Insert eyebrow raise from the woman who monitors my employment.

See, here's the problem. I will talk for ten minutes if you let me on all the reasons Planned Parenthood is an excellent and worthwhile organization that we are lucky to have in our communities. I will tell you how it is a fabulously friendly no-judgment zone staffed by kind and relatable young nurses and sweet, motherly, yet thorough doctors who have a genuine and honorable interest in keeping women healthy and informed and at peace. It is a place built by advocates for women's issues in general, and a place that supports its mission well. The only reservation I have about going there is that I've begun to feel too old for the place. Beyond that, I think they rock (in so much as the place that swabs my cervix can actually, in fact, rock.)

Unfortunately, much of the conservative, Bush-backing American public is unaware that Planned Parenthood is a perfectly excellent and innocent place to get your run-of-the-mill exams taken care of for all your girly bits and lady parts. Instead, they see it as the place that hands out condoms to kids like lollipops and readily dispenses the much-maligned morning-after pill to careless co-eds. I'm not even going to talk about the picketers and the services they're there to disrupt. That is not a route down which I want to venture.

In other words, Planned Parenthood is, to many people, a place where the morally-void sluts and loose, fast women go.

Knowing this, I think I just told my boss that I'm a dirty whore.

This is troublesome to me for many reasons, not the least of which is that it couldn't be further from the truth. OK, I lied. It could, I suppose, be just a tad more radically far from true... One pretty recent questionable encounter and a few long-ago mild indiscretions point to the contrary, I'm aware. But those small infractions to my virtue withstanding, I do think I'm overall more in line with wholesome, Quaker-like oats than with sowing any particularly wild ones, as it were.

But my boss doesn't know me in my off-the-clock world. I can only imagine what she's wondering about me right now.

And this is the reason I should confine all my at-work social time to my cohorts on the Internet. Clearly I can't be trusted to conduct small talk in real-time.