Initialisms and being PC

Who the hell thought PMS was a good idea? PMS has its own psychiatric designation and is regarded generally as a stable diagnosis. Hmmm others would beg to differ. When I lived with my best friend it was interesting during ‘that time’ of the month. Mostly we would bleed around the same time as most women tend to do (imagine a whole office of bitches about to bleed?), so we would both have a week of eating nothing but shit and about 10 tonnes of it per day and crave octopus and peanut butter sandwiches. There would be bitchiness with some crying at ridiculous things, then it would all be over, and the world would be fantastic again.

The hard part was when we would fall two weeks apart and then there was 2 weeks of hell out of four. CaaarrHrist!.

Sometimes I wouldn’t know it was coming for her and would get home from work to see her sitting on the couch with wine crying.

“What’s wrong?” I would say worried.

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Nothing. I’m single.”

“And?”

“I’m going to be single for the rest of my life.”

“You’re 22.”

“Oh my God.”

And there would be howling and then I’d say, “Is your period due?”

“Tomorrow.”

I’d give her a pat and a hug and leave her to it, although I’d usually try and steal the bottle away from her. It can get ugly after ¾ of a bottle of Chardy or Sav Blanc.

There would also be the face. There’s three faces in all. One is the look of incredible grief and sadness over nothing much at all. The second is the look of a spoiled brat and the third is the look of a killer. Stay away from that bitch I’m warning you. Sometimes I’d walk into her room to say hi and she’d be sitting there on her bed, her arms crossed at her chest with a look of a really unpleasant child. She’d look like Nellie Olson from “Little House on the Prairie” except with better eyebrows and bangs. We’d have some shocking arguments because having PMS makes you a snappy, nervous, paranoid, maniacal wreck for days sometimes.

The worst thing you can do, the absolute no no, is if you realise your friend or girlfriend is pissed off or something isn’t right, you never ever, ever say, “What? have you got your period?”

You don’t ask, “are you hormonal?”

Never say even calmly after she has had a blow out at you over the smallest detail, “When’s your period due babe?” like it was just some off the cuff query like ‘it doesn’t matter anyway I was just wondering’ sort of remark. Because if you do you could be killed outright with anything sharp or blunt in her hand at the time and she would feel that it is completely warranted and frankly I agree with her. It is a red, red (scarlet red, frank red) rag to a bull. The reddest flag you ever saw in all your days of red flag spotting.

After it is all over for her and she thinks back on it, she knows it was irrational and even possibly unfair and she thinks ‘poor bastard or bitch’ if she has really given it to whoever, but she makes up for it by being pleasant for the next three weeks. Until someone (he) does something stupid and even without PMS she yells at him and if he says “have you got your period?” she will still kill him with a blunt object because what the hell did he think was going on last week? And truthfully it is really because he cannot conceive that anything at all could be his problem or fault - it is always hers. PMS is an escape route in some relationships.


PMS used to be PMT in earlier years but like everything, it has to go through a name change, which is why generations today are confused by just about everything each other says. It is no longer tension; it is a syndrome. Next, it will be a disorder. PMD. Once it was ADD now it’s ADHD. No one knows what people are saying anymore. It used to be shell shock then post traumatic stress syndrome, then post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s PC when we use the right language, politically correct. Not racist or biased or some other ‘ist’. And it’s right that we have changed terminology to stop defining a person through either a disability, illness or difference. Wheelchair bound, Autistic person, lesbian woman, cancer sufferer. Some terms need to change. They just had to. The old expressions define a person. But no wonder the people in the world can get confused about it all too. I always feel for older people who are not at all being disrespectful when they say someone is retarded (a term still used in America unbelievably) or handicapped yet we all shrink away in horror because we don’t say that anymore and it sounds so very wrong. We are grateful and glad that we have better terminology, more appropriate ways to describe things, disorders or people who have particular differences that while are still being labelled are not seen as negative. Labels need to go though in my opinion. The pigeonholing we use now will be disregarded as unacceptable and badly chosen on another day to come and it will just keep going around and around I suppose. It shits me but that’s probably because today I have PMS. I have to really think sometimes if ever I want or need to describe a Black person. Do I say Indigenous, Aboriginal, black or coloured person, negro or Black African, or African American without offending anyone? because whatever I say today won’t be the same tomorrow and the day after it will be something else and I’ll never mean anything prejudicial or negative whichever I use. Negro for example used to be accepted as a customary neutral formal term used by those of Black African descent as well as non-African blacks, now it is often regarded as an ethnic slur. Mostly it’s not necessary to identify anyone by skin colour but on occasion it is, just as gender is used for whatever reason. Anyway today its PMS, next week it will be KMHBTOIHMP (killed my husband but that’s ok I had my period) and next year it will be something altogether different again.

There is a whole website dedicated to acronyms or initialisms. AF acronym finder. Boasts that it can find 750,000 acronyms. OMG!

PC-Isms Politically Correct Terminology