It was June 1992, and we were our training instructor's first all-female flight at Lackland Air Force Base. We had nothing to shine our boots with because we had gotten into trouble and could not go to commissary. When our training instructor came in to check on what we were doing, he noticed that we were all using tampons to shine our boots. He turned beet red, walked out and returned a half hour later to throw boxes of cotton balls into the room. Improvise!