The dawn stirred and so did MacGyver. His mullet gleamed in the soft light of dawn and he knew it.

“They say the morning is for birds and worms,” he said out loud, feeling for his trusty paperclip.

The cold winter air made his words look serious, like little clouds of gravitas. As he did karate out of the bed, his hand hit a suspicious wetness. MacGyver visibly stifled a gasp, clenching his jaw to demonstrate his steely resolve. There was blood on the mattress.

“And it looks like today, I’m the worm. A worm that woke up in their own blood.”

Using an old pair of jorts, MacGyver blotted the blood. But the stain remained. Eyes darting around the room, he lunged for the window, snapping off icicles like an American action hero. Too masculine for things like soap and cleaning, he began to rub the stain with ice. But it remained.

He knew he was bleeding, but he couldn’t let this stain set.

“I know I’m bleeding, but I just can’t let this stain set.”

MacGyver only kept salt, rice, and baking soda in the kitchen; he didn’t know much, but he knew, it’d be enough. First, he scrubbed the stain with a mix of salt and melted ice; then, he attacked it with a baking soda slurry. He looked really cool doing this. The stain had been lifted.

Glancing around, steam inexplicably rising from his pajama-clad frame, MacGyver rubbed a clean hand through his luxurious mane. A strange pain was churning in his body, low in his abdomen. He grimaced, making his way to the bathroom.

MacGyver’s blood ran as cold as the cinematic morning air when he discovered the source of the blood: it was him. He imagined dramatic eighties synth building as he met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror. He felt strangely…different. And he needed answers.

Padding his jeans with toilet paper, MacGyver turned to the pain in his abdomen. He filled a sock with rice and sewed the end shut, popping it into the microwave alongside a cup of water.

“Gotta have that moist heat.”

A couple of minutes later, his trusty heating pad tucked into his jeans, he headed out in search of himself.

***

“Are you there God? It’s me, MacGyver.”

Tears stung his eyes as he silently mouthed the words of Judy Blume’s seminal work. The roiling emotions of his menarche responded to her tender tale of girlhood, womanhood, and the spaces inbetween. He felt impossible and it filled him with pride.

“That’s me,” he boasted as he snapped the book shut with one hand. “Always doin’ the impossible.”

MacGyver dashed to the bathroom, eager to formulate a plan. Tossing out the bloodied toilet paper of his ignorance, he fashioned a belted sanitary pad out of paper towels and paper clips.

“Thanks, trusty paperclip. You’re always there when I need you.”

Striding up to the librarian’s desk, book in hand, he smiled a knowing smile when she scanned the barcode.

“Big day?”

“The biggest.”

She slipped a small parcel into his hand with a wink.

Wrapped in pink paper, MacGyver feared the worse. He sprinted down the street back to his compound, his aerodynamic hair propelling him forward to his bomb defuser tools.

Kicking his own door down with a Chuck Norris roundhouse, he did a sweet knee slide all the way to his Problem Solving room. His breath quickened, skin gleaming with sweat. Removing the wrapping with a pair of dull fingernail clippers, his stress erection turned to kindness tears when he read the words aloud.

“My First Tampon Kit. Well, I’ll be.”

Strange, long cotton balls with long tails of string sat nestled in a white box. Each cotton plug was encased in smooth plastic. Unsure why the nice lady had gifted him with such treasure as “tampons,” MacGyver pressed the special box into his Save The Day bag. This is foreshadowing, you see. And he knows it, too. That’s why he smiled.

***

The next night, MacGyver was trapped in the forest. The large abrasion on his arm was bandaged with an un-furled “tampon,” taped to his skin with duct tape. Desperately thirsty, he used another tampon as a survival straw, placing the cotton-filled thick end into a puddle and slurping clean water through the thin end. He wished he had a plastic bottle, as forcing the water through wadded up, pressed cotton would work better, but he wasn’t picky. Another tampon was used as tinder to start a fire, its fluffy cotton burning fast; it was important to burn his homemade sanitary pads as not to attract the bears.

See, MacGyver didn’t trust bears.

“I trust a bear about as far as I can throw one.”

With a satisfied smile, MacGyver placed the string of a tampon in a shallow dish full of oil, marveling at his ingenuity.

“Instant candle!” He clapped for himself.

The orange glow of the flames illuminated the wad of cotton hanging from MacGyver’s nose, stained crimson from a vicious nosebleed. His allergies were truly terrible this time of year.

But before he could pull his nasal plug, the badass winter wind carried the voices of the bad guys right into MacGyver’s trained ears. And he was ready. Prior to blowing out the candle and smothering his fire, he took one last glance at the tray in front of him. Three “tampons” shone in the flickering light, their bulbous ends wet with top secret toxins.

Darkness enveloped him as he waited. He rose to aim his first weapon. Tucking the string inside the tube, he aimed it. He aimed it good. And with an expert thwak, the cotton went flying into the mouth of the first bad guy. The wet sound of blood gurgling into lungs filled the forest, so loud as to drown out the footsteps of the henchmen as they fled the scene.

“Guess I’ll save these other two for later,” MacGyver said to himself. He packed up his Save The Day bag, excited to head home to roast a chicken for dinner. He knew he didn’t have any cooking twine, but no matter. Two tampon strings and some water would do a good job keeping the legs tied together like on those fancy cooking shows.

MacGyver smiled up at the sky and time turned into slow-motion. The moonlight caught the slivers of curved metal as he tossed his trusty paperclip behind him into the blackness.

“Who needs paper clips when you have tampons?”

Having a period never felt so good.