A National Geographic Collage

It has been said ....sigh....that I could make something perverted out of thin air.

It is a skill that I have honed over my lifetime, and held against me by #2. Don't know where it came from, considering that I was raised in a strict Catholic family where the word tampon could shake the world. Actually, I think I was so repressed, that my sexuality eventually started to leak out somewhere, and it started in my humor.

The tampon story for your entertainment: I remember being about 12, sitting in my parents living room and reading my mother' s Reader's Digest, probably looking for the jokes and the "increase your word power" section, which were the only things that interested me. I came across an ad of a young girl riding on a horse, stating that with Tampax, you could be safe riding a horse, swimming, bowling etc. Wow I thought, this is magic, whatever it is..something very mysterious and cult like. BUT WHAT WAS IT? Both my parents were miraculously sitting down at the same time and in the very same room.

"Mom" I queried. "What are Tampax?". No answer. "It says here you can do everything with them, but nowhere does it say what they are!". My father shifts the paper and wiggles in his seat. My mother looks at me stonily with glazed eyes and says nothing. I knew from experience that the conversation was ended. But what they didn't know, is that Ms. Encyclopedia Brown had something new to investigate.

OH LET ME TELL YOU. Once I learned what it was, and all about how it was used, and what it was for, it started a new educational campaign that lasted a few years. I cross referenced my sources, found illustrations, read everything I could get my hands on, and then a classmate gave me a copy of The Sensuous Woman by "J" in my 9th grade global studies class, and the rest was history.

I was so repressed that even National Geographic was hidden if there were any pictures of nude African natives dancing around. Nudity was verboten, and I remember as a young child accidentally seeing my mother naked, and hiding under the bed fearing that the roof would fall. And the one time my father's man thing opening in his PJ's failed, I was mortified. WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Nothing like my younger brothers, that was for sure.

So as a commemoration of my repression and my freedom, I made a collage completely out of National Geographic images from the 50's or so. Hope you get a chuckle. Bet I could do something fun with anything...anyone got a Catholic Charities Magazine laying around?

Patti O Perversion