A few years ago, I went to Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test. I’d had a one night stand with a guy, it was the first time I’d ‘been’ with someone in a year, and we had used protection, so I was pretty sure I was ok, but I was late, so I wanted to double check.
Anyway, while giving the attendant all my information, the following conversation occured:
Her, “Have you considered going on birth control pills?”
Me, “No, I don’t have sex that often.”
Her, “Well, evidentally you do!”
I still don’t know how I could have replied to that. I just hung my head and kept my mouth shut.
Speaking of “female supplies”…I have another anecdote.
I used to work in a bookstore. My girlfriend also worked there. Two other women happened to be in one morning. As usual, I was the lone guy. Unfortunately, they happened to have all gone on the rag on the same day.Things had started to look grim. Blood was in their eyes.
As lone guy, I was dispatched to Wal-Mart to buy Midol.
So I’m wandering around the pharmacy department, looking lost (I never buy Midol), and one of the clerks asks what I need. I said, “Midol.” As she was showing me to it, she said, “Is that for your girlfriend, hun?” I said, “Well, her, and two others. All three really, really need it.” Her eyes got big and she said, “Oh, dear. You better hurry, then.” “Yea!”
Akin to GMRyujin, there is a lovely little used bookstore I shopped in every week while in high school/early years of college. A few years pass, I move away, then move back. Decided to visit to see if they had any of the Sleeping Beauty books by AN Roquelaure or other “adult” books. So, I have a stack of purient reading in my arms, the tiny little bird of a shopkeeper looks at the titles, then at me…
“Why, MissTake! It’s been so long! I see your tastes have changed!”
She then decided to ‘enlighten’ me about what I was purchasing. Having a sweet little old lady talking about S&M was weird.
Not even my embarrasing purchase (of which I can’t think of any)… I stopped into a drug store with a male friend to pick up drinks or something. I think were were on break from work or something really innocuous.
There’s only one register open and quite a long line. There was a woman in front of us – she was about 3rd or 4th in line – and all she had was this: a magazine, a box of chocolate, a bag of chips, Midol, and a box of tampons. It was very obvious to me what kind of day she was having.
Suddenly, another employee comes by to open another register. By this time, the PMS lady was next, but my friend very politely let her go to the newly opened register before us. On the way out I congratulated him for being so considerate of someone who was clearly not at her best at the moment. He was completely oblivious, but once I listed her purchases, we were both really glad he’d been nice to her. Nobody wants to piss off a PMSing woman in the drugstore. Life’s too short.
Once when I went grocery shopping with my dad, we got in line behind a guy who had 12 cans of Crisco and a large box of condoms. Nobody said anything, but the guy must have noticed Dad eyeballing the cart, because he spontaneously burst out with, “We’re having a fish fry!”
Conker’s Bad Fur Day for the N64. For those who don’t know about it, it’s a game that is violent, crude, and foul-mouthed, starring a fuzzy antihero in a blatently lowbrow (and yet clever) parody of the platformer genre. Beer, boobs, and reenacting the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan with squirrels and teddy bears. Somehow the media picked up on the existence of the game, and it failed to register that there was in fact a good game within the raunchiness (as opposed to to some others I may mention coughBMXXXXcough). I must have been 15 or 16 at the time, and the clerk at the store began railing against the game when I brought it up. I think I ended up telling him that I worked for a review site and that I had to get it.
I had never met my SO’s parents before we decided to move in together (actually, I moved in with him).
Anyway, the weekend I moved in, his parents also delivered a bedframe that his dad had build for him. As both SO and I had cars, not trucks, getting a new mattress back from the store to the apartment was going to be a problem.
Handily, since his parents were delivering the bedframe in a truck, that same truck could be used to pick up the new mattress.
SO: Dad, can you come with me to pick up a new mattress?
SO’s dad:Sure, but Doebi, you better come too, you will be sleeping on it after all.
(these are the parents I had met a couple of hours earlier.)
This, of course, is followed by an hour of wandering around the mattress store, trying out mattresses, while SO’s dad hangs around.
My most embarrassing experience was buying a pregnancy test when I was far too young to be happily pregnant. The woman was just chatting away with me and didn’t see what I had bought until after the sale was complete and she went to put it in the bag.
She said: “Have a nice… oh.”
Someone else mentioned condoms always being given away for free, and that’s been my experience too. I don’t think I’ve ever payed for condoms; they hand them out everywhere in Minneapolis. Coffee shops, street corners.
Seperate story: I was working at a gas station and a very creepy guy came up to the counter demanding to know where he could get some porno, staring me down and trying to make me uncomfortable. He seemed dissappointed when I, nonplussed, gave him elaborate directions to the nearest adult bookstore.
ZJ
A friend once told a story about being in line behind a guy, in the middle of the night, who was purchasing nothing but a eggbeater, a pack of condoms and a tub of Vasilene.
I don’t recall making any questionable purchases myself, although I always feel a little odd when I throw a box of condoms in the cart on top of the baby food.