In Good Company: No Holes In Your Ears
Enid Blackburn tells of her pierced-ears family, male and female.
‘No holes in your ears until you leave school,’ I said when one daughter first brought up the subject of ear-piercing.
Mind you, she chose an unfortunate time to ask. I had just been watching a David Attenborough subject grinning beside his native hut – or was it his wife? A commendable feat, nonetheless, because besides having an ugly whalebone wedged between his nostrils he had two boulders swinging from each ear lobe, which were stretched to somewhere around where his loincloth would have been.
His mates had presumably left their ear-rings at home, they just had long holes flapping around their shoulders. My daughter played her ace: ‘Everyone else has – why can’t I?’
‘Barbaric,’ ‘primitive,’ ‘expensive’ were words I used to defend my decision. So the following day her gran took her to town and paid for the ear-studding. Not only have I disobedient daughters, but a dissident mother also.
Naturally the ‘me too’ epidemic immediately struck her younger sisters, but gran had spent up. ‘When you are older’ was too long for our next daughter, then 15. Next evening she performed a home darning-needle operation on her left ear. She liked it so much – she punctured it again, higher up, two holes in one and the other ear as yet, untouched.
One Saturday afternoon, son was smouldering near the fire and I was about roll his snoring body away from the heat, when I noticed something glittering in his ear. My shouts and wail eventually penetrated his stupor and I must say he was almost as shocked as me when he felt the ring in his left ear. He muttered something about ‘a bet’ and after checking his wallet next opening time he sold it to his sister.
So it was with a somewhat sheepish expression that I crept into our kitchen last weekend with two gold studs embedded in my bright purple lobes. The protest was unanimous. Why? After all the denunciations! I keep asking myself the same question as I dab with spirit and turn the screws daily.
It all started when this hairdresser was combing through where my hair had once been. I’ve seen similar ‘What about a wig?’ expressions when other hair-dressers have given up the struggle to find suitable words to compliment their handiwork. So I was surprised when he said ‘Have you tried ear-rings?’
Some time later eldest daughter and I paid a kind lady (with her ears well hidden, I noticed) to fire the gold studs. Before you could say ‘Let me out,’ our ears were shot and we hadn’t bolted. We are thrilled to bits with our new ears and can’t wait to swap our studs for some of the dainty butterfly or lovers’ knots we keep staring at in jewellers’ windows.
’Course you get the ‘earie’ conversations all the time about surgeons having to amputate etc. ‘Thought your ears were pierced Elsie,’ ‘They were, but every time I tried to push my ear-rings in I fainted.’
I have given strict orders – if I faint will someone keep pushing till they are through, OK!
