To serve as a warning of sorts, let me say: the title is neither ironic nor facetious. This post is, in fact, about the abandoned wrapper of a maxi-pad. So, while it is not at all about menstruation, it is about something which once covered a piece of menstruation paraphernalia. So, anyway, if you just don't want to read about periods, you're fine to keep reading. But, if my use of the word "menstruation" twice in the sentence above makes you uncomfortable (because of the word, not because of some nit-picky editorial tic regarding repetition) then please don't continue. You're comfort is very important to me! I mean, it's not "very" important to me, but I care. A bit. Anyway, here we go:
It's not a maxi-pad. It's just the wrapper.l Peach. Vinyl. Folded up into itself. Kotex, I'd guess.
The bus starts moving the moment I retrieve my day pass from the fare machine. I clumsily fall into the second seat along the driver's side of the vehicle, and there it is, sitting in the seat directly across from me.
For awhile, until seats in the back open up, I continue riding right across from it. I watch each stop as passengers get on and off the bus, pretending it isn't there. An older man in a KCFD polo wearing glasses with wide, brown plastic frames, sits a seat away. At one point, a younger man with chin length, blondish brownish hair and a purple umbrella he carried like a walking stick, sat directly to its right. For a few stops, a third man sat by it, pretending to read Steinbeck but really just watching out the window. Nobody paid any attention to the folded up bit of pale, orange plastic.
Except me. I was predictably intrigued. This was the most fascinating piece of feminine hygiene product debris I had ever seen. How did it get there? Did it slip out of a woman's pocket? Had she cleaned out her purse and decided to leave it behind? In either situation, why had she kept an empty maxi-pad wrapper instead of disposing of it in a bathroom trash can?
Perhaps she happened across some absurd situation while riding the metro and craftily used the maxi-pad to solve a problem. If so: where was it now? In a shoe serving as a make-shift sole? Taped tightly around the gash on someone's left forearm? Clenched in a toddler's hands with a sharpie-drawn face and body, acting as a doll to temporarily replace the one that remained, sad and abandoned, at the bus stop? Disposed of in a public trash can, drenched in the forehead sweat of an over-heated city dweller?
Or perhaps a frequent rider of the bus system feels unnaturally possessive of the second seat on the right side of the bus and leaves discarded feminine hygiene wrappers on the seat as she exits, hoping to discourage other patrons from claiming the spot. If so, it works. I watch, stop after stop, passengers getting on the ever-filling bus. Each one walks past the seat as though it isn't there. They opt, instead, to sit with strangers, to stand near the back doors gripping onto a pole, to smush themselves in between the man muttering angrily out of the window and the teenager reeking of pot.
I wonder where it's going. It's on a brief furlough from bathroom drawers, the bottoms of handbags, and waste bins. How many routes can it ride before it gets tossed to the floor and trampled out or swept into a garbage bag? In the end, who will dispose of it? And is it enjoying it's tour of the city?
A disembodied voice announces the street names of an upcoming intersection. I look up and yank on the yellow cord that's stretched along the length of the bus. The driver pulls to a stop. The doors open. I exit. And as the bus, and the abandoned maxi-pad wrapper, move further into the distance, my curiosity dissipates.
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