Not Your Average Piercing Pagoda

In college, my friends and I decided to “get pierced.” Where on our bodies? It didn’t matter. Why? Because it was a bargain.

Someone got word of there being a BOGO (Buy One, Get One) sale at the local tattoo/piercing place, so naturally, we paired up and set off to get our bodies’ adorned.

Even before I started drinking beer heavily, I had a little Buddha belly, so a belly-button ring was out of the question. Lip ring? Nah, because I reasoned, “when I apply my Chapstick, I’d have to do half a lip at a time.”

People with nose piercings always looked like they were picking their nose, so I opted instead to keep the focus where I wanted it — at eye level. And that’s how it was that Esco, Kara, and I all ended up with eyebrow rings (since Spank already had one and we needed a 4th to get the BOGO discount, Homer got her belly button pierced).

Part I
The day we went, fate decided my friends needed a life experience.

As I lay face-up on the piercing table, I could hear a fellow patron chatting my friends up about the tattoo she just got and then I heard her ask if they wanted to see it. Not thinking anything unusual, I bore down and had my eyebrow pierced, paid my half and we all walked out.

Only to realize later, when she said “it” she meant her clit piercing she ALSO just had done recently.

My friends, too curious to look away, couldn’t just “Say No.” So they got an eyeful of her vaginal piercing. Sidenote: I was pissed I missed it. Let’s be serious, how often does that kind of opportunity present itself? Once in a lifetime, I tell you. Because it’s never happened to any of us again.

Part II
Now my parents…are like the mom and dad from “The Wonder Years”. A gruff, blue-collar father, and a sweet, cookie-baking, ”Let’s keep our voices down because Dad’s had a hard day” mom. So I knew neither of them would take kindly to my fashionable act of rebellion. Nor would my brother, who later remarked, “You get into a fight with a tacklebox and lose?”

Which is why I withheld information until the day my mom came to visit.

As she crested the hill and came toward me, her Crest Toothpaste smile slowly dissolved into a puzzled grimace, akin to the Christmas Grinch.

All she could say was, “Heidi…Your beautiful eyes…What did you do to your beautiful eyes?! (as if I had lost an eye from a hot poker)” And all I could reply was, “Mom, but look I chose a blue ball in the eyebrow ring to match my eyes!” The grimace held fast, her eyes suddenly steely.

We went out for a tight-lipped brunch, all the while she stared me down disappointedly.

As I waited for her outside the diner, a giant wasp flew by and stung me in the thigh, swelling to the size of a peanut butter lid. When she arrived later with some ice in a cup, I thought, “Oh good, the tension is broken…she’s still the tender caretaker. Here to help her baby heal.” But I was wrong. Because when I said, “Why? Why did this happen to me?”

She replied merely, “THAT’s what you get.”

As if Mother Nature were on her side and they were both in agreement about my stupidity.

The eyebrow ring lasted less than a year because of my summer waitressing gig at the Cracker Barrel. My options were either to put a Band-Aid on it (personally, the last thing I want to see when I’m about to order food is facial gauze) or to take it out due to it not aligning with the corporate motto of ”Country Fresh.”

I still have the little blue ball. And when I see it, I smile at its power to unleash fury in Mom Z.