"If God had wanted holes in your ears, he would have put them there."
I must have heard my mother utter those words at least 1,426,069,751 times. Knowing what I know now, that means she heard me say, "Can I get my ears pierced?" at least 7,373,981,024 times. I'm sure at some point in time she stopped bothering to even answer my question, much like I no longer answer Alexis when she asks if she can get a horse. It didn't really matter because I knew the answer was (and is), "No. Never. Not a chance."
By the time I was in second grade, I was pretty much devastated about the whole thing. In my head, I was the only little girl in the entire world who wasn't wearing sparkly things in her ears. I asked and I begged and I pleaded and I made promises, but she never did back down.
Her absolute resolve against earrings served her well, right up until the very first time I got the keys to the car right after getting my driver's license on my 14th birthday. (All hail North Dakota and it's crazy early driving age!) The very first thing I did was drive to a place that I knew would pierce my ears without checking my ID. I walked into the place with my ears exactly "as God had made them" and walked out with six holes in one and three in the other.
Let that be a lesson to mothers everywhere. Failure to negotiate with Tiny Terrorists may lead to a radical act at some point in time. (Also: ZOMG am I screwed if Alexis turns out to be anything like me when she's a teenager.)
Needless to say, the whole thing went over REAL well when I got home. I think I was grounded for my entire 14th year. It didn't matter, though, because I had already won the war.
Fast forward to my college years...Those nine holes served me well. I got a part-time job at a jewelry kiosk in the mall and somehow ended up becoming a sales rock star. I was good at selling everything, but I was REALLY good at selling ear piercing. I broke sales records left and right, completely confounding my manager who wanted to strangle me every time I talked a parent out of piercing their infant's ears. It was company policy to pierce any ears that came through that little gate, but it was MY policy to do everything I could to make parents realize that piercing a baby's ears could turn out badly. If the piercings didn't get ripped out by tiny curious hands, then the kid would grow up, their ears would grow, and those piercings would wind up uneven. *I* didn't want to be responsible for any craziness, so I would send the parents elsewhere if I couldn't just talk them out of it.
I think it was that honesty and those nine holes that made people trust me. A lot. In the two years I worked there, I easily pierced 5000 ears. Somewhere I even have a a whole box of sales rewards I earned for piercing more ears than anybody else in the entire company for the month. I won it nearly every single month.
So, yeah, my mom may have told me, "If God had wanted holes in your ears, he would have put them there," but the real irony was that I was the one putting holes in people's ears. Heh.
