This is Bodies, a show about exploring the mysteries of our bodies.

I'm Allison Barringer. Kalea's story begins in the same place that womanhood is said to begin, the first period,

and for Kalea it set the stage for a mystery that would come to

dominate her very experience of womanhood.

It was

1982 and Kalea was 11. She was small and slender then, just like she is today.

It was summertime in Pittsburgh.

A bunch of my friends and family,

we were on my grandmother's block.

They were playing the traffic cop game

where everyone's running, and then the traffic cop game where everyone's running and then the traffic cop says

red light green light yellow light stop stop and before I'm at the finish line, I felt like this weird sensation, like this, you know, wet gooey feeling between my legs. So I ran to my grandmother's house and I just ran to the

bathroom, pulled down my shorts, and I saw this red splotch of blood on my panties.

And my grandmother was like, what's going on?

I said to her, like I think of'm bleeding and she just grabbed some toilet tissue and bald it up in her hand and handed it to me and was like put this on your panties like put this between your legs and she told me go sit down to the back room.

My grandmother's back room was small and all of the furniture was like way too big for the space.

And there was this huge couch covered in plastic, but I knew better to sit on that couch because if you were 30 years or younger, that couch was pretty much off limits.

If there was ever a time to sit on a plastic couch, I would think that time would be now.

So she just pointed to this red plastic stool and just told me to go sit my butt down.

Your mother won't be home for a few hours now. Just watch some TV until she

gets here and she went into the bedroom and she laid on the bed and I was like her

favorite place in the world.

...