The Piercing

     

     Ever since my daughter found out that I got my ears pierced when I was five, she’s been bugging me to get hers done.  (Monkey see, monkey do.)  I told her that she had to wait until the end of soccer season, and I finally made good on that promise over the weekend. She was on top of the world with anticipation over this big event.  I, on the other hand, had a gut feeling that this whole ordeal would somehow come back to give me a big, fat headache.

     I took her to one of those “Claire’s” stores in the mall, since I know of no other piercing places that don’t also do tattoos and body art (not really the childhood memory kind of a place I had in mind for her).  And let it be said that I despise “Claire’s” with every fiber of my being.  It’s like some douchebag idiot decided it would be a great idea to cram as much shitty merchandise as is humanly possible into one teensy tiny area of space. You can’t even walk in that freaking place without knocking off a headband or a necklace.  It makes me totally claustrophobic, and I want to claw out my eyeballs. However, being the awesome mom that I am, I pushed aside my contempt for this retail hellhole and whisked my daughter through their overcrowded doors.  

     The assistant manager explained the whole process to my daughter who took it all in with her very innocent little hole-less ears. She described how she would have to keep the earrings in for eight weeks, clean them three times a day, and turn them four times a day. I asked her again for the five thousandth time if she was absolutely sure she wanted to do this, to which she emphatically replied, “YES!” She then had to pick out which earrings she wanted from a board that had everything from itty bitty birthstones to itty bitty flowers. She hemmed and hawed for a good while as I signed off on all the paperwork.  Finally, she decided to go with the itty bitty pink daisies, and we were ready to poke some holes.

     I asked the woman if she would pierce both ears at the same time, so we could get it all over with in one fell swoop. She called over another associate who measured out just where to put the holes and marked the spots with a purple marker.  My daughter just sat there and grinned away, while I second-guessed this whole dumb ass decision of mine.  When I looked at the twinkle in my daughter’s eyes, though, I knew there was no turning back.  She squeezed my hand very very tightly, and just like that, she was sporting itty bitty flowers on her earlobes. She was a freaking rock star, too, never crying or even so much as flinching. I thought she’d explode with happiness when she took that first look in the mirror at her new and improved ears, and I breathed a sigh of relief that we’d made it through without even one little tear.

     That night, we cleaned her ears and turned the earrings just like we were supposed to, and she went to sleep lying perfectly still on her back so as not to jack up her new ears.  The next morning, she insisted on a high ponytail to show off her pink sparklers and practically ran all the way to school to show her friends.  They oohed and ahhed over them, and all seemed good in the hood…until that night.  For whatever reason, she had a complete freak-out at bedtime over the fact that she couldn’t take out the earrings for eight weeks (even though she’d insisted that she was cool with this very fact less than twenty four hours prior to this!)  She couldn’t understand why I was allowed to take mine out and change them whenever I wanted to, even though I had explained umpteen times to her that I’d had mine pierced for over thirty years.  She was so hysterical that I thought for sure we were taking out the daisies and calling it a day.  God only knows what goes on in the mind of a six year old female, though, cause she all of a sudden calmed down, and I haven’t heard a thing about it since.

     I sent her off to school today with another high pony in case anyone happened to miss her new addition yesterday.  I’m praying that she comes home this afternoon still in love with her piercings, but I’ve given up on trying to predict her unpredictable moods.  I do know that I absolutely draw the line at ears though.  There will be absolutely no belly button piercing, lip piercing or nipple piercing going on while she’s living under my roof.  Oh, snap, have I turned into my parents?