pierced ears and everything else

Last August I took my daughter to get her ears pierced.  Actually I took her several times to get her ears pierced because she kept wimping out. I documented the whole process here.

She never had any problems with her ears, no infections, no irritations. She found a pair of puppy earrings and wore them everyday. She loved her grown-up look.

Until Halloween.

We were invited to a Halloween party at our neighbor’s house, after trick or treating. There were many kids who ran around and played in the yard while the parents sat by the fire laughing and partaking in adult beverages. It was a really fun party until one wild and rambunctious child grabbed my daughter and spun her around somehow pulling the front part of her earring off. The earring just broke, it did not pull through her ear. She didn’t even cry, until the next morning when she saw that the post was still in her ear.

From that moment on she swore she never wanted to have pierced ears again. She took them out and that was that as far as she was concerned. I tried to convince her she was being silly, and I told her that the holes would close up if she didn’t wear earrings. I also made it very clear that I was none to pleased about going through the expense and the ordeal we went through just so she could have the holes close up. I pulled out my spare mom guilt and tossed it at her. I also shot from the hip and told her if she let them close up I was not going to take her to get them pierced again. EVER.

The thing is she looked really cute with earrings, I loved the idea of buying her cute earrings for Christmas and her birthday. I imagined buying her a nice pair of little diamond studs when she was 16. All that mother/daughter stuff I never got to do with my mom. I was sad that she decided to let them close. But, I know my daughter and if I keep pushing I will just make it worse.

So I forgot about it, or tried to.

Every now and then I would try to see if the holes had closed up, she wouldn’t let me actually examine her ears so I had to be sneaky about it. I’d try to look while brushing her hair but she didn’t like me doing that either.

Eventually I just gave up.

Last weekend she said she was ready to get her ears pierced again. I was so excited about it that I completely forgot about my empty promise not to take her to get them re pierced.

So once again, in the rain, we left to get her ears pierced.

I should have read my post from last August before I grabbed my car keys.

We went through the exact same thing, she got scared and chickened out.

The problem was she wasn’t ready to give up. She really, really wanted to get her ears pierced again. She was just too afraid of the pain.

I mentioned that the last time she did it, when she finally went through with the deed, she didn’t flinch and that she told me it didn’t hurt. I tried to convince her that since she had already done it once there was nothing to be afraid of.  I named all of her friends who had pierced ears, even the younger friends. I went so far as to say that one little girl, (the mean one) was a baby and a scaredy cat, if she could do it then Maddie could too.  All to no avail.

My daughter sat in the piercing chair crying. Strangers walked by and surely thought I was trying to force her to get her ears pierced.

And I was.

I knew if we didn’t get them pierced that day we would have to repeat this whole process again and possibly again. I just wanted to get it over and done.

The thing is she didn’t want to go home without her ears pierced, she just couldn’t get past her fears. We sat there, well, she sat there and I stood there, pinching each other to show how much it might hurt. I wasn’t going to lie to her, it was going to hurt for a brief second. So I held my pinches just a little bit.

I gave her pep talks about facing her fears and plowing through them. I told her she being afraid was ok but refusing to proceed because of fear was just going to hurt her in the end. I was talking like the best of the motivational speakers out there. Of course she had no idea what I was talking about.

She asked me to get my ears pierced to show her that it didn’t hurt. I thought about this for about a second then asked her:

“If I do this do you promise to go through with this?”

“Yes”

“There will be no chickening out, right?”

“Yes, I will go through with it, I might cry, but I will do it if you get yours pierced.”

I didn’t want to get my ears pierced again.  It seems every time someone gets their ears pierced, I do too, just to show them that it isn’t that bad. I’m running out of room on my ears to pierce.

Without taking up more of your time, can you guess who got their ears pierced on Saturday and who didn’t? Can you guess who will be taking her daughter to another mall because there is no way in hell I am going to show my face in that last mall again? Do you want to hazard a guess at how many times and how many different malls we will visit before her ears are pierced?

And finally,  just guess how many holes I have in my ears now.

The worst part of this whole thing, aside from the fact that we are not actually finished with this project, is that I have to go and get more earrings now.

I like symmetry. I can’t be symmetrical anymore because I don’t have enough matching earrings. I bought one pair of diamonds when I got divorced the first time, I bought another pair of slightly smaller diamonds when I got divorced the second time. When my mom moved to the home she gave me her diamond earrings that were right between the other two in size. So basically I had three diamonds on each ear getting progressively smaller. When I pierced the cartilage on my ears I just wore the fake diamonds, I hadn’t gotten married again so I hadn’t bought myself anymore earrings. I can’t put cubic zirconia next to the real thing. I have six weeks to figure this out, provided I don’t get them pierced again.

That is not a picture of me, it just came up when I searched for pierced ears. I like it, it reminds me not to be a moron again.

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