Jill Gaither’s daughter came home sobbing because of an accident only a girl could experience.

Her period started unexpectedly at school and leaked through her pants.

Her mother had given her supplies to deal with such situations. Why didn’t she take what she needed out of her locker?

“Then I have to pull it out in front of everyone,” her daughter said. “There are boys standing by my locker.”

“Oh yeah, that’s seventh grade,” Gaither thought. She asked why her daughter didn’t go to the nurse. It’s embarrassing to go the school nurse and admit something like this, her daughter explained. Duh.

Gaither wondered why the school, in Ladue, didn’t have tampons and pads available for girls in the bathroom. She told her daughter that she was going to look into it.

“She, of course, is mortified because she might be associated with periods, but I was undeterred,” Gaither said. She put together a wish list of supplies that could be purchased for the bathrooms. Then, she emailed her friends who also had middle-school-aged daughters and asked them to purchase what they could from the list. When she had collected enough items, she approached Ladue Middle School.

There was some initial pushback. The school already provides supplies at no cost at the nurse’s office. There are also coin-operated machines in the bathrooms to purchase hygiene products.

Gaither responded that no kid carries quarters on them anymore, and the supplies the machine dispenses are unfamiliar and uncomfortable for teen girls. Also, boys don’t have to trek to the nurse’s office to ask for toilet paper after they use the bathroom. Why make it burdensome for a girl to deal with her bodily functions?

At first, the school put a sign in the bathroom saying there were teen-oriented products available in the nurse’s office. After a few months, they eventually put the tampons and pads in baskets in the bathrooms, like Gaither originally wanted.

“They were worried it would be a disaster with maxi pads stuck on lockers,” Gaither said. Another concern was that students might just take free supplies home instead of using them at school, to which Gaither responded: If they need them that badly, then please, let them take them home.

None of the concerns materialized. Many girls have used the free products available in the bathroom. Gaither attended a parent association meeting and asked if they would be willing to fund the project. They agreed to budget $100 a month to stock the four bathrooms at the middle school.

Much of the attention in the media recently has focused on the negative consequences of “period poverty,” where girls don’t have access to, or can’t afford, sanitary supplies. In some parts of the world, girls drop out of school when they begin to menstruate due to the lack of supplies. The documentary short film “Period. End of Sentence” told the story of bringing a machine that makes sanitary pads to a small village in India and how it changed the lives of the women there. A group of girls at a North Hollywood school raised funds to buy the machine and paid for the film production.

“Ladue is a pretty affluent area,” Gaithers said, and increasing access and availability to products even there helped many girls. She heard about girls who don't have anyone to talk to or to help them once they get their period. Her goal is to “normalize this normal thing and not make it this shameful thing,” and to spread the idea to other schools.

She has a meeting later this month with a teacher who reached out to her because a Ladue student wants to spearhead the same effort at underserved schools in the area. Other cities and states have already taken up the issue of free menstrual supplies in schools as one of basic equality and dignity. It’s disruptive and stigmatizing to send girls to the nurse to access basic hygiene supplies. It’s embarrassing to deal with stains from accidents. And it’s unconscionable that schools would force impoverished families to choose between buying a child’s food or buying period supplies every month.

Using a tampon is just as much a “luxury” as using the bathroom soap to wash your hands.

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In the room where they prep you for surgery, "Sixteen Candles" played on the small television. I was waiting with my husband, who was about to get his troublesome right knee forcibly removed and replaced with an improved model.

He had put off this surgery for many years. He tore his ACL playing basketball in his early 20s. For a while, he could wear a knee brace and get around fine. But after a few decades, the joint had worn down to the point where the bone was hitting bone. Even walking became painful. So he finally relented to undergo a surgery, that, frankly, we associate with much older people.

As the parents of young teenagers, I'd like to think we've embraced middle age. We go to bed earlier than we ever did before. We talk a lot about how things were different when we were growing up. I like to remind my spouse that he's nearly a decade further along this path than I am. But there are moments when you start to realize how far you have drifted from youth.

I noticed it when I started hearing a lot of passionate conversations about joints -- knees and backs and shoulders -- in recent years. Also, when did my friends start obsessing about apple cider vinegar remedies and the most effective eye creams? (Don't get me wrong; I'm terribly interested in these topics, as well.) Why was I well acquainted with my loved one's blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers? How come the celebrities I loved growing up were dying?

In a culture in which people claim adulthood later and later, it's mildly disconcerting when you realize you've become physically older than you feel inside. For me, the moment of reckoning hit when my eldest child, who was born when I was in my late 20s, started high school. I remember high school vividly. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago. My child was leaving behind her childhood for adolescence and ushering me into a new life phase, as well.

It turns out acquiring children speeds up time. More so than any changes within myself, it's watching their speed-of-light growth that most acutely marks the passage of time. It takes so long for us to get from kindergarten to high school graduate, but our children fly through those years.

While we waited for my husband to be taken to the operating room, I shared some tidbits from Twitter that seemed appropriate for the occasion. Judd Nelson is as old now as Angela Lansbury was on "Murder She Wrote." My husband shook his head.

Remember when you watched "Gilligan's Island" as a kid, he said. Alan Hale Jr. played the Skipper. He looked old to me back then, he said.

Today, my husband is a decade older than the Skipper.

A former newsroom administrator described turning 50 to us in a way we've never forgotten. He explained that your body tends to feel different when you wake up in your 50s. Things hurt.

"If I woke up feeling this way when I was in my 20s, I'd call 911," he said.

We hope this new knee will turn the clock back for my husband. We are planning hikes and trips and walks around the neighborhood. He thanked me for pushing him to finally get it done. When your wife's persistent nagging turns into sage advice, it must be a sure sign of maturity setting in.

We turned our attention back to the television, to a time when teen idol Molly Ringwald ruled the screen.

Today just so happened to be her birthday, I said.

She turned 51.

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The boldface, all-caps headline on Canary Mission’s homepage says: IF YOU'RE RACIST, THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW. Specifically, it's targeting those it believes to be anti-Semitic.

Imagine Sophie Hurwitz's shock to discover her name and face on the shadowy, anonymous site. Hurwitz is a sophomore at Wellesley College and a graduate of John Burroughs School. She is Jewish and very involved in her Jewish community. She is also an outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights.

A friend contacted her to tell her that her name and photo were listed on Canary Mission. Sure enough, there was her photo and personal information among dossiers on student activists, professors and organizations that support Palestinian rights. The site claims to have sent names of listed students to prospective employers. The blacklist is designed to intimidate students and faculty members and prevent them from criticizing American policies about Israel.

"I was pretty freaked out," she said. "Strangers on the internet are being fed lies about me." She was most worried about becoming isolated from her Jewish community and wondered if she could pursue legal action. She was included on the site for the "crime" of speaking publicly about why she would refuse to accept a Birthright Israel trip, a free 10-day trip offered by a not-for-profit educational organization to all American Jews ages 18 to 32. Hurwitz said the trips are one-sided propaganda tools used to justify the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and abuse of Palestinians.

In fact, it's her deeply rooted faith in Jewish values that compels her to speak out for equal rights and justice. She's a member of Jewish Voices for Peace and has a fellowship with the Jewish Women's Archive, a nonprofit historical organization. She says she's luckier than other students doxxed by the site since her employment has not been affected.

She heard about one young man who legally changed his name after being blacklisted. He was worried about his application to medical schools. Others have had to delete all their social media accounts after getting harassed and being told to kill themselves.

"It's a deliberate attempt to shut down dialogue on Palestinian issues," she said.

Canary Mission is not the only shadowy group online attempting to intimidate and silence college students. It's not the only organized effort that wants to equate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism.

Shaadie Ali, of Madison, Wisconsin, graduated last year from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in geological engineering and geology. His name and photo appeared on the site after he attended a conference in 2017 on Students for Justice in Palestine. He did not speak at the conference.

"I was pretty shocked and freaked out and scared," he said. He was thinking about applying to law school and looking for jobs. The doxxing sites know how to use search engine optimization, so its listing is one of the first results on a student's name. His grandparents and uncles live in the West Bank, and he is afraid the Israeli government will deny him entry based on his name being on the anonymous site.

He, like Hurwitz, figured they would be fighting an expensive and losing battle to try to get their names removed.

"I'm going to let my actions speak for myself," Hurwitz said. "I try really hard to fight for what I believe in," she said. "I love being Jewish. I love my Jewish community. I love my people."

She was heartbroken that this personal attack came from within that same community. "The Jewish community can and should be better than this," she said. "I'm working toward that."

Recently, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar rightly apologized for tweeting that U.S. support for pro-Israeli policies is "all about the Benjamins." Her tweet played into centuries of conspiracy theories about Jewish money corrupting Western politics, and she needed to become more aware of the damage in perpetuating these tropes. There are ways to argue for more just treatment in the Middle East without resorting to anti-Semitism.

It's also wrong to conflate any criticism of Israel, like Hurwitz's rejection of the Birthright trip or Ali's attendance at a conference, with anti-Semitism. And unlike an elected public official, these are students who face threats and loss of career opportunities. For all the conversation about conservative free speech being stifled on campuses and conservative students feeling unsafe about sharing their views, where is the chorus of voices condemning the shady tactics used by Canary Mission?

"A lot of people who hand-wring about free speech, they don't really care about this," Ali said. "Where were they when I got doxxed?"

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