I’ve been meaning to write the story of how I came to pierce my ears, though even thinking about it makes me squeamish. I recently learned that May 16 is National Piercing Day, so I have no excuse for further procrastination. It’s time to ’fess up.
During the summer I was seventeen, after I graduated from high school and before I went to college, I concluded I should get my ears pierced. My primary motivation was that at five foot one inch and 92 pounds, I needed all the help I could get to look more mature. As further impetus, a friend had given me a pair of earrings designed for pierced ears, not realizing that my ears weren’t pierced, and I wanted to wear the gift.
No one in my family had pierced ears—not my mother, nor either of my grandmothers, and certainly none of the men. The women wore clip-on earrings. My mother only wore earrings when she dressed up, and she complained of them hurting after a long evening out. She gave me no encouragement to follow the clip-on tradition, and the trend in the early 1970s was definitely toward piercing.
I didn’t really want my parents to have input into my decision, but I also didn’t want to go behind their backs. So I made some off-the-cuff remark one evening after dinner to the effect of “I’m thinking of getting my ears pierced.”
My mother looked at me, then at my father, then back at me. “Whatever you want,” she said.
I had it—permission to do as I pleased.
A couple of weeks later, my fifteen-year-old brother and I were home by ourselves. The rest of the family was spending the week at our summer cabin in Coeur d’Alene. I don’t remember why the two of us had not gone with them, but we were home alone, and I had a car.
So one day I invited a friend to go with me to a local department store, where several girls I knew had had their ears pierced. I needed someone to buck me up because I was sure I’d get cold feet. I picked my friend up from work during her lunch hour, and off we went.
We got to the store, and I announced to the clerk that I was there to get my ears pierced. She refused to perform the operation. “You’re not eighteen, and we need a parent’s written consent.”
I could get certain medical procedures without my parents’ say-so, but I couldn’t get my ears pierced? I was dumbfounded. But I couldn’t overrule store policy.
Still, I was determined to follow through. And I was determined to do it that week, while my parents were away, so they couldn’t revoke their permission.
That afternoon I called a woman who was a friend of our family. Her oldest daughter was in my year at school, and this woman had pierced her daughter’s ears. Plus, she’d had a year in nursing school, so in my opinion she was well-qualified to perform the surgery—and certainly more qualified than a store clerk. “Will you pierce my ears?” I asked.
Being a long-time friend of my parents, she asked, “Do your parents know you’re doing this?”
“Oh, yes,” I answered. It wasn’t really a lie. They knew I was thinking about it, and hadn’t said no.
“You and your brother come over for dinner tonight, and we’ll talk about it.”
So we went to dinner at her house that evening. We talked while we ate, and somehow the conversation ended that she and her oldest daughter (my classmate) would operate on me and the second daughter, who was a couple years younger than me.
Needles sterilized. Corks readied. The first ear on each patient numbed.
Stab.
Searing pain in my left ear.
“It’s crooked!” the former nursing student cried. “I can’t do this.”
Meanwhile, her daughter had finished the first ear on her younger sister. Then proceeded to do her sibling’s other ear. “Come on, Mom,” she said. “You can’t leave Theresa with just one ear pierced.”
“But it’s crooked. It won’t look right.”
So that is why my classmate ended up piercing my left ear a second time and then the right.
The next evening my parents got home. When they found out what I’d done, they immediately called their family friend. “Theresa told me you’d agreed,” she said.
“You told me you’d agreed,” I argued to them.
They didn’t deny it, though my mother said, “I didn’t think you really meant it.”
When my grandfather found out, he told me, “Only chippies have pierced ears.”
Aquamarine and diamond earrings my grandmother gave me for my 18th birthday, about 8 months after my ears were pierced.
But my grandmother said, “I think she looks nice. If I were younger, I’d get my ears pierced.”
The situation blew over with a minimum of fuss in the family, and I still have those piercings today. I’m careful to wear earrings regularly, so the holes don’t close because I’d never go through the process again.
And I’ve never been tempted to get any more holes—in my head or anywhere else.
When have you shaded the truth to get something you wanted?
I got my ears pierced when I was 14. I wore clips earrings before, but some fell from the ears and let me with one earring, some hurt too much. In 1982 in Romania, the highest style was given by the Polish tourists who came here on holidays and sold various things to increase the little amount of money they were allowed to exchange in local currency. So I bought silver earrings from the Polish, then I went to a nurse who knew me since I was little, to ask her to pierce my ears. I knew she did this thing for babies.
I didn’t even think to ask my mother for consent 😛 . I simply bought the earrings, went to her, and she teased me a little (because she knew me and because it was unusual to have a 14 years old girl ask for pierced ears. The girls who didn’t get them pierced in maternity, got them pierced before they were 1 year old). “Why, doesn’t your boyfriend like you without earrings? If you cry, I’ll let you with one ear pierced and one not!” I didn’t cry, but not due to the threat, just because it didn’t hurt as much as to cry – like a Penicilin injection, for example 🙂 .
She put red silk thread in my ears, as I had seen at the babies before, explaining me that I would be able to wear the earrings only after it heals, in about one month. And I would have to move the threads in my ears several times a day, not to get stuck, and to anoint them with Tetraciclin ointment every time.
When I arrived home and my mother saw me, she said that she had made a whole girl, not one with pierced ears – “like savages, like cannibals”. But she didn’t punish me and didn’t scold me more.
It seems ear piercing is a rite of passage for most girls whose ears aren’t pierced when they are infants.