Nikkipedia

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.