If there was one thing in middle school I feared more than my mom finding out I had a boyfriend, it was the different and mysterious ways I may find blood in my underwear. Starting my period seemed pretty normal and inevitable, but I kept hearing chatter about cherries popping, which sent me into a state of panic. What did this mean and how do you know if you popped your cherry anyway? From the crude explanations of my misinformed peers, I gathered that this was a disastrous and painful thing that happened should anything other than toilet paper come near my vagina.