How Can One Pair of Ears Be So Wrong?

Several of the Super Junior boys have their ears pierced and so do I. Normally, I don't much care for guys wearing earrings. But when these guys do it is usually adorable and I would like to be adorable. So I have started buying cute earrings in an effort to up my adorableness factor. Look at how adorable they are -

The first time my ears were pierced I was 3. Since my mom is a nurse, it was decided that it would be a good idea to have a doctor do it at the hospital where she worked. This was fine in theory, but doctors know nothing about piercing ears. I was sent home with thread loops in my ears and told to ease them through my earlobes for x number of days and, voila! I could wear earrings.

Things did not go as planned. The holes almost immediately closed up with that thread just dangling there. "Easing" it through my ears? That's a joke! And my ears got infected. This 3 year old was not a fan of the whole earring idea. Fortunately my mom had the sense to cut that evil thread and yank it out of my ear lobes. Everything healed up very nicely after that.

Then I turned 5. No self-respecting Indian woman has unpierced ears so my mom thought it was time to give it another go. She had learned from the last attempt to put in some earrings in immediately following the piercing.

She settled me snugly on her lap and proceeded to pinch one ear to "deaden the pain" (this does not work). 
Once my ear was sufficiently "numbed" she used a hypodermic needle (one of those long ones) to pierce my ear.It was unpleasant. Then she put in an earring she had gotten in India and I'm telling you those posts are thick! And the backs have to be screwed on. Ouch! And then the whole procedure was followed on the other ear. Happy Birthday!

Fast forward 40 years. Now that I have become a Super Junior fan I'm trying to be more aware of my appearance. I wear makeup more often. I'm working at losing weight. I pay more attention to my clothes. And I'm wearing earrings more often.

 Dude-man gave me a pair of lovely pearl earrings for my birthday and I wear those a lot. Then I noticed the cute earrings the Super Junior boys wear and I thought I would follow their example. I bought some smallish hoop earrings and noticed that they didn't hang the same way in each ear. At first I thought it as because I had purchased cheap earrings. I decided to fix it by bending one of the posts until it hung the same way as the other ear. I had to bend it nearly 45 degrees and almost snapped off the post. Hmmm... Maybe it was my ear and not the earring? This was made clear when my daughter tried on another pair of earrings which looked perfectly fine on her and ridiculous on me. Sigh.

 So I decided to go a different route and try some really cute earrings that are a little bigger than I usually wear. Then I noticed it, no matter how tightly I had those earrings in, one of them always looked as if it was about to fall out. Once again I thought it must be the earrings and not me. Oh, it was me alright. Sigh.

 Here's what I think happened: Back on that fateful fifth birthday my mom messed it up. On my right ear she angled the needle towards my head thereby making any hoop earring lopsided. On my left ear she angled the needle upwards so that the earring looks like it will fall out. And why didn't I notice it for 40 years? Because I didn't ever wear hoop earrings before and because I never paid attention to my ears either. And now that I've noticed it I've decided I can't live this way. It's just too shameful.

I looked myself in the mirror and proclaimed, "I will not let crooked ear piercings keep me from being the cute girl I want to be! NO! I will  rise from this obstacle a better woman, and I shall have my ears pierced again!"


And so I did.

And that's the story of how I FINALLY got my ear professionally pierced. (And they look really cute too!)