What your mother never told you

Mothers, as a rule, are stable, sensible, all knowing beings, who, if we are lucky, guide us through our formative years with pearls of wisdom, who care for our every need, give us a gentle (or not so, as the case may be) nudge in the right direction when we show signs of going astray and who teach us the things we must know when we step into the big bad world alone.

We girls learn that in fact the nursery rhyme got it right and that boys are indeed made of slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails, there will likely be no knight in shining armour riding a white charger with our name emblazoned on his heart and we learn that fashion will dictate that we stupidly try to force our bodies into ridiculously tight and uncomfortable clothing to attract our mate......and that he will probably not even notice, save for an inebriated grope once in a while!

Our mother also imparts information of an even less savory nature. We will grow 'bits and pieces' at a most inopportune time in our life when we are just fine and happy playing in a sandpit, we will become controlled by something strange called hormones, our behaviour will become that of a small devil, we will suffer periods, cramps, backache a strange change in mood that of course won't be our fault......... and we will get spots!

And hell....do we?! Our mothers sympathize, reassure us that the 'outbreak' is barely noticeable, provide us with various remedies for this invasion of our once beautiful and peach like skin and tell us repeatedly that 'it's just a teenage thing', and it will soon pass. We are relieved, she is our mother, we believe her words of wisdom and look forward.

What she doesn't tell us is that month after month, year after year, decade after decade, once a month this unpleasant experience will haunt us. Sure, we may appear reasonably normal for a proportion of the time but once a month the cramps and pain we endure will be very publicly heralded by the sudden appearance of one big, fat, red, angry looking 'zit' that will without doubt place itself in one of three areas. One's normally pert nose end, the very tip of the chin or smack bang in the middle of our forehead, where no amount of hair rearrangement will hide it!

These obnoxious things have a perfect grid reference of our face, they know their advantage points, they go for maximum exposure, they sit for three weeks at a time planning their attack strategy and they hit the target perfectly every time. A big glowing personal Mount Vesuvius all of our very own. Goddam, they don't even have the decency to be the version of our teen years that we had the pleasure of annihilating each day in the bathroom mirror!

These 'interlopers' serve as an early warning signal to the males around us of impending doom, so that they might run for cover and they would somewhat be less conspicuous if the arrived accompanied by a military marching band....and yet, our mothers never told us! They plied us with promises instead that spots were a 'teenage thing', that we shouldn't worry unduly.......... for they would be gone forever very soon!!!