PMS alerts
The HoS editorial approves of a new service:
Every so often an invention comes along which is so brilliant that we wonder how we ever got on without it. Fire is an excellent example. Ditto the flush lavatory and sunglasses.
A new reminder service established by an enterprising American might not beat, say, child immunisation as a contribution to human civilisation, but it has to be reckoned a contender.
PMSBuddy.com, a website on which you can sign up to be sent an email alert that someone in your life might be approaching a particularly tricky time of the month, has received more than 100,000 enrolments. Men who enter the date and length of the last menstrual cycle of up to five women, will receive timely messages like “She’s on yellow – tread carefully, fella”. The founder of the free service, 28-year-old Jordan Eisenberg, says he hopes to launch it as an iPhone application soon – presumably a must for subscribers who don’t check their emails regularly.
Rejoicing in the slogan “saving relationships one month at a time”, the website should prove a boon for men who lose track of time while trying to work out what they did wrong two weeks ago.
This reminds me of an incident at Otago University. One day, one of my good friends, Jo, snapped at something I said or did. I was, as usual, being provocative and deserved it but normally Jo was very placid and never responded to my stupidities. I was surprised she did and cracked a time of month joke. She responded that it was in fact that time, and that might be why she was cranky.
Anyway I said that it is more fun when she bites back at my hassles, so I wrote up on my wall planner her cycle dates, so I would know when to best hassle her. Jo was there when I did this, and was laughing. We were good mates, but totally platonic.
Now what I didn’t consider was how people might react, without knowing the context of it being a joke between Jo and I. Anyway the next day we were having a party in my room, and suddenly one of the attendees asks whether Jo and I are sleeping together. We both basically call him crazy and say how in hells name led him to think and ask that. He then pointed to my wall planner and asked why did I have Jo’s cycle marked on it for the rest of the year.
We both looked at each other and burst into hysterical giggles. This made everyone more suspicious until we explained. I’m still not sure everyone believed us!
Anyway back to the main topic of PMS alerts, I was about to joke that there is probably a Facebook application that allows you to notify certain friends of your timing. And to my astonishment, there actually is. It has 791 users!