Etiquette, oh Etiquette.
The concept of etiquette fascinates me endlessly. Of course, everyone’s opinions differs on all subjects, and comparing these ideas is intriguing to me.
Firstly, I’m not even sure of the etiquette of writing about the subject that I’m intending on writing about – how taboo is it? Is it something that no-one should know, or is it fine to laugh about it? I don’t know, but I will go ahead nevertheless.
Aged 16, I was told by a street-wise friend that a year after the first time you have sex, you should have a smear test. She’d just been for her first one. I was horrified at the idea. Not that she’d had hers, and had therefore had popped her cherry aged 15 – that was nothing amongst my friends of the time, one of them was a mere 13, which looking back now, seems awful. We’re all 26 now, to have been sexually active for half our lives already is hideous. What were we all thinking? I digress, it’s the subject of the smear test that horrified me – of course at that age, no detail of anything is left unsaid, so I heard *all* about it. It didn’t sound fun.
I began wondering when I was supposed to have one. Of course, I wasn’t going to ask my mother, and admit what I’d been up to, so I kept quiet. I did everything in my power to dodge the dreaded smear, and the Gods seemed to be on my side. The dates kept changing. It went from a year after losing it, to being 18, to being 21 – I kept somehow avoiding them – it got put up to 25 recently, and somehow I missed it again due to where my birthday fell. I was thrilled.
However, it seems that the time is now upon me. I’ve been caught. I’ve had several letters, which I pretended I didn’t get, but now, I want a repeat prescription of my contraceptive pill, for which I have to have six monthly checks anyway, so when I called to book my check, it was flagged that I had to come in for the smear-test-of-doom. Oh dear. It wasn’t even as easy as, come in tomorrow, or next week. ‘When are you mid-cycle, love?’ When am I what? I haven’t a clue. 10 minutes on the phone later and after lots of head-scratching and comparing diaries, we worked it out. And it’s tomorrow.
As I said, my problem with all of this now, is the etiquette of the situation. Having never had one before, I really don’t know what to expect, my friend’s horror story of 10 years ago is a distant memory. Most importantly, right now, the burning question is the etiquette of the situation. Am I expected to ‘tidy’ my ‘lady garden’? I don’t wish to appear rude and not do so if the answer to that question is yes, yet I don’t want whoever is going to be prodding me to think I’ve made a special effort for the ‘occasion’; Is it an occasion? It’s first thing tomorrow, so I’m not exactly expecting to be wined and dined, but might there be candles and soft music? I at least want the lights to be dimmed. I don’t usually allow people to poke me without any sort of effort on their part.
Now I’ve got into pondering such details, I’m now worrying what I should wear? I don’t want to look keen and go in my shortest skirt, but it feels like I should dress up somehow. Trousers, I’d imagine will be more problematic, and I’ll end up fully half naked. At least with a skirt, it can be more cartoonesque, I’ll hold it up as a barrier so I can’t see what they’re up to. And footwear – socks are a no-no for skirts and trousers – no one likes having their socks left on. This means I’ll have to wear some sort of strappy affair. Can I keep them on while I’m lying down for this hideous test, or do I have to take them off too? Will there be stirrups, my legs in the air? I just don’t know. I’m going to play the whole thing down for now and pretend it’s not happening. I’ll deal with it in the morning.
I used to blog quite a lot – back in the days when myspace was my vice. I would spend my mornings at work furiously typing whatever thoughts had come to me that day – they were often rants. These days I’m all about Twitter – it’s overtaken Facebook, though I maintain a presence on both, and occasionally stop by on myspace for good measure. My blog received kudos and comments galore with my nonsensical witterings, until stupidly, I turned it into my photo gallery in a futile attempt to ‘promote’ my then boyfriend, a DJ, who is now long gone, apart from an entry in my phonebook as ‘Copperknob’. This is my revival of my beloved writings. Should you wish to read the works of old – 
When I read my friends updates and they have written something heart-wrenchingly emotional or sad, I sympathise greatly, but at the same time wonder why we announce it for everyone to see – is it just attention seeking? And, is it socially acceptable? And what for the unwitting reader – we’re not all willing confidants. I occasionally feel uncomfortable when my not-so-close friends statuses refer to things that as an accidental reader, I shouldn’t necessarily be privy to. For example, I have some friends whom are friends of friends. I’ve met them a few times. When they’re wondering aloud about how worried they are about their ‘Doctor’s appointment tomorrow’ and sometimes mentioning pregnancy (which I have no knowledge or interest in) – it feels like I’m an intruder. Like a spy, I feel like it’s something that I definitely shouldn’t know. However, there’s always a positive – another friend – not that she really is – I’m not sure why I accepted her – announced (drunkenly, I hope) that she ‘wants to let Matt no* she is so sorry for what said to David, and that she didn’t mean a word of it’ – which is, I suppose, a whole new level, to which I am amused, and proud to be an onlooker. There’s very little in life more amusing to me than such a public confession of this kind. I have to wonder – was it drunkenness? Idiocy? I neither know or really care, though I remain unamused at the thought that a facebook status might win her beau back over from an obvious blunder.
