You Need This Like You Need Another Hole In Your Head
09/06/99
Peter B. Steiger

Almost from before our kids were born, my wife and I have
had discussions (read: verbal warfare on a global scale) about
whether or not our kids should have pierced ears. To understand
my point of view, you have to understand my philosophy about
outward appearances.

One of the first things that endeared me to Sylvia when we
finally met in person after a whirlwind online romance was the
way I reacted to some heavily made up, presumably fashionable
young lady who walked by our table at a restaurant. I say
presumably fashionable because I have to take Sylvia's word for
it that the normal guy reaction would have been to drop my jaw
to the floor and drool over this tasty morsel. I most certainly
did *NOT* drool, although the tears I shed from laughing so
hard might have confused the casual observer. From my point of
view, this woman could have been on her way to perform as
syndicated clown personality Bozo. I'm talking massive streaks
of purplish red on each cheek like she had been clubbed in the
face with one too many issues of "Cosmopolitan"; lipstick right
out of a Pla-Doh factory explosion; eye shadow in colors that I
wasn't aware were in the visible light spectrum.

When my wife-to-be recovered from the scene I made, I
pontificated further on the horrors of performing unnatural
acts on your body in the name of fashion standards devised by
some oversexed perpeptual adolsecents in Los Angeles. In my
worldview, two of the stupidest things a human can do to appear
more beautiful are causing permanent deformation to the calves
by teetering around on stilts and poking holes in any part of
the body as a convenient place to hang spare lumps of precious
metal. Do you have any idea how much pizza you could buy for
the cost of a typical 14K pair of earrings? The mind boggles.

Suffice to say, I was NOT in any hurry to start poking holes
into my own flesh and blood's flesh and blood. I managed to buy
a little time by whipping out the phrase "informed consent".
See, Sylvia is a nurse who prides herself on not pushing
patients into a deal they don't understand when there are risks
involved, so I appealed to her inner nurse and convinced her to
wait until any kidlings we had decided for themselves they
really wanted to do this, and what was involved in the
decision.

That bought me ten years. From time to time Sylvia would
look wistfully at a toddler with earrings (while I refrained
from shouting at the mother, "Why don't you just drive NAILS
into the poor child's skull, you monster!") When Irene was old
enough to notice pierced ears, I started playing hardball: I
went into gory detail about what was involved. This was no
half-hearted effort at talking her out of it; I knew Irene was
at least as uncomfortable as I with the idea of physical pain,
so the mere mention of having sharp objects boring through her
flesh was enough to convince her that pierced ears were not for
civilized, pain-fearing folk.

I managed to keep this up for nearly three years. Any time Irene
started to think she was maybe willing to risk the pain for the
sake of having real earrings like more and more of her friends
had, I would start making noises like an electric drill buzzing
through meat. Sometimes I'd pinch her earlobes to enhance the
effect; I also liked getting out the drill from the toolbox and
brandishing it with a sinister laugh, or boring a few holes in
nearby objects. If we heard someone screaming bloody murder
during a fight next door or yet another gang brawl in the
street outside, or a couple of cats going after each other, or
any prolonged blood-curdling noises, I'd explain that it was
probably somebody getting her ears pierced. Any time I saw a
particularly graphic news or magazine article, photograph, or
web site about body piercing, I'd make a point of calling it to
Irene's attention. I was always rewarded with her delightful
gasp of revulsion.

Just to make sure I was covering all the bases, I also gave
frequent lectures on the importance of individuality in the
face of strong peer pressure. I encouraged her to laugh at
people who did weird things to their bodies for the sake of
beauty - people like her mother, for instance.

Nevertheless, one parent can only do so much against the
growing tide of peer pressure, particularly when there is
another parent threatening court injunctions against
terrorizing our children. Eventually Irene decided to ignore 
my fatherly advice and seriously ask about getting her ears
pierced. She asked despite my horrified shriek, my pleas to
come to her senses, and my efforts to physically stop her from
completing the sentence.

This time it was Sylvia who saved the day, amazingly enough:
She insisted that Irene would have to ask again for three
consecutive days before we would take her request seriously.
This bought us another year or so, because Irene would forget
to ask or lose her enthusiasm after another one of my Black and
Decker demonstrations.

Then one day a few weeks ago the unspeakable happened: Irene
came out and formally asked to have her ears pierced, and her
mother said "That's two days in a row. If you ask again
tomorrow, we'll be sure this is not just a passing whim and it
will be time to really get your ears pierced!" Desperately I
started to make the old electric drill noises, but Irene just
laughed and skipped gaily out of the room. The child is only
10.41! How can she do this to herself?

Once again, it was Sylvia who kept our daughter unpunctured
for just a little while longer. Her desire to be overprotective
was stronger than her desire to rend her daughter's flesh, so
she wasn't about to go just ANYWHERE to get the job done. She
called every ear piercer in Cheyenne and asked them a long list
of qualifying questions, such as "Exactly how do you prepare
the patient for surgery?" and "Please recite the complete
Hippocratic oath, in Latin." Everyone from Mabel at Wal-Mart to
Sigmund the brain surgeon failed Sylvia's rigorous test,
although Igor at the Punk World Body Piercing and Adult
Bookstore Emporium came dangerously close until he slipped up
on "how many micrograms in a karat?"

The complete lack of qualified specialists in the area
bought us another couple of weeks, but neither Irene nor Sylvia
was ready to give up this insane quest. Finally Sylvia offered
a scary alternative: She could do it herself. She figured
poking a hole in the earlobe couldn't be any more difficult
than starting an intravenous line into an artery, or did she
mean amputating a gangrenous limb? Well, whichever; she wasn't
about to let those pesky details interfere. She proposed that
we spend our otherwise idyllic Labor Day cruising the stores
looking for a solid gold pair of earrings.

SOLID GOLD? Now it wasn't my life or my daughter's that
flashed before my eyes; it was my bank account. I realize
Sylvia only wants the best for her little girl, but Irene
couldn't tell gold from plutonium. This is a child who still
gets more mileage out of the ribbon on her gifts than the gifts
themselves. But Sylvia insisted that 14K had impurities that
might infect newly-gouged flesh, so only pure gold was safe to
use. Here's a news flash for you: tearing a hole in your body
and then putting a foreign object in the hole might be a bad
idea! So she's expecting me to believe that the little germ
factories are going to let you off the hook as long as you use
pure gold?

As it turns out, nobody else in Cheyenne thinks that way;
all we could find at Body-Piercings-R-Us and
Body-Piercings-4-Kids were 14K earrings or at best gold PLATED
earrings which Sylvia said would wear off and expose the ear to
all those nasty non- gold particles. Okay, whatever excuse I
can cling to that will further delay my only daughter's
perforation sounds plausible to me. Alas, I wasn't counting on
the glib tongue of a young lady at the next jewelry store. She
convinced Mrs. Overprotective Nurse-Mother that their beginner
kits with surgical steel posts had been sanitized, energized,
and pasteurized within an inch of their lives. I was torn: On
the one hand, or should I say ear, agreeing to this folly meant
an end to the delays; on the other hand, they were only $7.50.
My eye fell on one of the 24K gold rings in a display case
going for some 17 million dollars, and I decided that I had
fought the good fight as long as I could. With a heavy heart I
watched those surgical steel earrings go into the bag, and off
we went.

I complain endlessly about Sylvia's housekeeping - those who
know me and have seen my office know that I'm the king of
slobs, but Sylvia will readily admit that she out-slobs me, no
contest. Today, however, I was grateful for those mountains of
clutter that define our home (as well as make a significant
blip on most radar screens and block TV reception for miles
around). Oh happy day, Sylvia couldn't find her syringes and
other implements of human destruction. I was so delighted I
forgot to make flesh-rending sounds at lunch. My victory was
short-lived, however; Sylvia turned our all-too-brilliant
border collie loose on the living room and within hours the
mutt emerged from the piles with the nursing bag full of
needles. Sylvia called Irene into the bedroom, and it was zero
hour. Years and years of frightening my daugher with bedtime
stories about how the bogeyman would punish bad children by
piercing their ears were about to be lost with one stick of a
needle the size of a cruise missile.

There was only one thing left to do: I fired up the video
camera and prepared to document the execution on film. Irene
asked for something to hold and sent her brother running for
her favorite stuffed bear; I offered her a blindfold and a
cigarette. Sylvia, upon seeing the camera and noting that she
was dressed for the comfort of our own bed, contributed some
useful directorial tips such as "if you point that thing at me, 
they'll have to dissect you to find all the pieces of it
that I'll cram into every orifice on your body." My guess is
that years from now when Irene sees the film of herself
screaming and crying, she'll have the same advice. I also bet
that there's a concerned father somewhere in the neighborhood
who, when asked about all the screams emanating from our house, 
told his daughter "it's probably somebody getting her ears pierced."

Well, it's all over (including the shouting). Irene now has
two little blue gems stuck out of the extra holes we drilled
into her head, and she's inexplicably HAPPY about it. The
elation wore off somewhat when she learned about swabbing the
holes with alcohol and rotating the posts so the skin doesn't
attach itself permanently to them while healing, but she's
still happy.

Welcome to the next step on the road to adulthood, Irene.