In her last post, Lindsay blogged about families brought together (or temporarily upset) by earrings, and asked for similar stories. Here is one of my own.
When I was in third grade, I noticed that many of the girls in my class had their ears pierced, so I thought this would be a good thing for me to have, too. My first attempts to persuade my parents, especially my dad, were less than successful, so I did the next best thing – I got clip-ons. Great big gaudy bows, to be exact. Then I heard about magnetic earrings, and got a pair of those as well. My dad thought my earring alternatives were pretty funny, so at a family birthday party, he himself wore one of my magnetic earrings – a little gold heart – and waited to see how long it took for anyone to notice what otherwise appeared to be a piercing. My grandparents were mortified.
Eventually, my dad told my mom that if I absolutely had to have my ears pierced, she was not to take me until he was far, far away. So during my dad’s next business trip, my mom took me to the mall so I could jump off the bridge after all my classmates. That night, I told my dad over the phone about my new earrings. He sounded squeamish even talking about it. I can only imagine how he felt 6–8 weeks later when the studs wouldn’t come out and he had to put pliers to my ears to pry the backings from the posts!