The Age of Experience

Eight might not be a milestone birthday in your world, but in mine, eight is magical. Eight is when you get your ears pierced. I know that in some cultures, baby girls have their ears pierced, but they have enough needs as babies, so I never understood why add daily disinfecting of earlobes to the already extensive list of things you must do to care for a baby. I picked age eight rather arbitrarily, since that was the age I got my ears pierced, so it seemed good enough for my daughters as well. I rationalized that at eight, my daughters could decide for themselves if the pain was worth it, and they could also be responsible enough to clean their ears and not lose their jewelry.

As you may recall, my baby girl, S, turned eight recently, and she decided she wanted to get her ears pierced. We went to the mall because really, where else are you going to go? We headed straight for the Piercing Pagoda, bypassing Claire’s Boutique, since I didn’t trust those mouth breathers to not make her head all lopsided. Plus, it has “piercing” in its name, which somehow adds a level of credibility to the whole operation. The Piercing Pagoda is an open counter kiosk rather than a closed mall shop, meaning there is no privacy, but it also feels cleaner and airy, instead of boxed-in, cluttered, and germy, like that nasty Claire’s.

S and I walked up to the counter and were greeted by a young man with the deepest voice, which I wasn’t expecting since he didn’t look like his testicles had descended yet. He was relatively clean looking and sported little diamonelle hoops in both ears. He had the most sausage-y fingers I have ever seen on a person of normal build, the body of a regular guy, the hands of the morbidly obese.

He asked how he could help us, and I told him that S wanted to get her ears pierced. He turned his booming voice directly to her, asking her age, and her date of birth, what kind of earrings she wanted. He was extremely patient with her, answering all her questions about how to tell if her ears are infected and when she can change her earrings. He was like a kind older cousin, calling her sweetheart and princess in a way that was barely creepy.

He gave me some papers to sign, and I handed them back to him and said, “So I have to ask, how long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, forever,” he said. “Since April.” I counted back from January in my head.

“It’s so easy, a monkey could do it,” he added. I didn’t say anything, but really, eight or nine months piercing ears at the mall is a pretty long time. I’ll bet those cretins at Claire’s haven’t even been tying their own shoes for that long.

“Plus,” he went on, “I am a tattoo artist. I’ve been around piercing for years.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, reassured. Because, really, nothing is more reassuring than handing your eight year old over to a pre-pubescent tattoo artist with less than a year’s experience poking holes in people’s earlobes. Then I remembered that tattooing hasn’t even been legal in our state for more than a year. He mentioned moving here from Pittsburgh, as if he could read my thoughts about the tattoo thing, but that started a whole new wave of panic. How exactly does a young man find his way from Pittsburgh to a mall in Greenville, South Carolina? Where did he learn how to pierce and tattoo, anyway? Prison?

As he got all his stuff ready, I watched him, letting my mind wander. It never occurred to me to take S to a body piercing salon. I could see us walking in one of those places, S perched on a stool getting little gold balls in her ears while behind her, some troll was getting a Prince Albert, his slab on a stainless steel tray. No, I thought, I’m not interested in getting my labia pierced, just my daughter’s ears, thank you.

S, as if reading my mind, leaned over and whispered, “I’m never getting anything pierced again. Just my ears this once.”

“Good,” I told her. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

The guy let us behind the counter and S hopped up on the chair, holding onto her stuffed llama tightly. He drew dots on her ears, then stepped back, checking to see if they were even. He erased her left ear dot and made a new one, looking at her left, then right, then left again, then straight on, until he was satisfied that they were even.

“Okay, sweetie, here’s what we’re going to do. Count one, two, then breathe out. When you breathe out, I’ll do it. You’ll feel a pinch, but the breathing out helps you relax. You should do that when you go to the doctor and he gives you a shot,” he told her.

Or, when you shoot up, I thought.

S gripped my hand like an alligator jaw, and he counted, “One, two, now breathe out, honey.” The first gold ball was in, and S’s face was a flushed combination of fear, pain, and delight. She tried to look at the mirror behind her, but I told her to keep still until he did the other side. She did, holding onto my hand, and before we knew it, she had two freshly pierced ears.

We left the Piercing Pagoda, S beaming wildly, practically skipping around the mall. We held hands and swung them high. S said to me, “Are you proud of me? I didn’t even cry!”

“You were so brave,” I told her. “Did it hurt?”

“Not too bad, just a little,” she said.

That night, at home, it was time to clean and turn the gold balls for the first time. By that time, her ears were swollen and red, not from infection, but just from the trauma of having been perforated. I swabbed her fresh wounds with cotton balls soaked in some special ear cleaning solution, and then came the fun part, the turning. When you get your ears pierced, you have to turn the earrings or else the holes won’t heal properly. I turned the stud in her left ear, and it spun easily. Next I tried the right one, which was a little more swollen than the left. At first, the stud resisted, but then I felt it give and spin. And bingo! There was the crying.

Yes, eight is a magical age. An age of new beginnings, of no longer being a little kid, and after experiencing pain as a result of voluntarily having your body mutilated, it is also an age of regret. At least for the next six weeks, until the thrice daily stud spinning is over.