It Only Hurts for a While

Plimco is writing about blood. Wendy is writing about getting her ears pierced again. Those things fit nicely together if you drunkenly let your neighbor ram a safety pin through your ear just because it's free and you want more holes in your head. I have six holes in my left ear and three in my right. Like Wendy, I used to want to have my left ear completely pierced. I don't know why I stopped. I think three more would do it. But I did stop and then I got old and lost interest in even wearing new earrings in the holes I had, so I settled on some hoops and studs and rarely change them. I do love hoops, though. Anyway, we were talking about the last two piercings. I was drunk and my neighbor was drunk and I somehow talked her into doing it--about half way up my ear on each side. The first side went really well. No real pain, a little blood, but nothing to write home about. This, of course, was because she put the hole so close to the edge of my ear she didn't hit any cartilage. It looks fine, but I feel like it's barely in there. The second one, though, right through the cartilage. And, if I recall, we were using a safety pin, which are not known for their razor sharp qualities. She pushed and pushed and there's this trickle of blood--not a lot-- but I can feel it running down the side of my face and then, there's this sickening pop and I all of a sudden felt very hot and like I might throw up. And it wasn't even through! That was just her finally getting through the cartilage. Then, she gets all upset and is like "I can't finish. I just can't." and so, there I am, with this safety pin stuck through half my ear, and I'm thinking, "Well, it can't be any worse than it has been." And so I pushed on it with both hands and it slid through the rest of the way just fine. The lesson in all of this? If you're going to pierce your own ears, get something sharper than a safety pin*. *Ha, you thought there was going to be a real lesson, like "Leave it to the professionals," but you'd be wrong.