“Aw, come on, Mom, you’ll be glad you did.” I was in a mall with my daughter a long time ago. Those were her words urging me to have my ears pierced. I had recently lost a couple of pairs of clip earrings. Those kinds pinched my ears. The screw types were no longer available.

At that moment, my daughter steered me toward a shop offering an ear piercing special. It had a large selection for pierced ears that appealed to me. In a moment of weakness, I consented. She had me seated on a stool in the back of the store in a flash. As we waited for a clerk, something floated into my  mind. I remembered the words and the way a woman had sniffed and twisted her head when she said them: “If God had intended for us to have holes punched in our earlobes, He would have put them there.”

Well, it was too late. I felt pain sear through my ear at the first punch. As the “puncher” prepared her tool for the other ear, I asked myself what in the world I was doing. I had shied away from having piercing done because of my fat earlobes inherited from my daddy’s side of the family. I knew the thicker my earlobes were, the more painful the process was, so I kept putting it off despite my daughter’s urgings.

Finally the ordeal, which took really a short time, was over. I had on a tiny pair of earrings (or posts). I was instructed to clean my ears with a special solution three times a day for eight weeks. Then I could wear earrings of my choice. “If I had known it would be so long before I could wear other earrings, I ‘d never have done this,” I grumbled to my daughter as we left the store. Secretly, however, I was quite proud I finally got up the nerve to have it done.

Five weeks later, as I prepared for a test at my doctor’s office, a sign in the dressing room ordered me to remove my jewelry. One of the posts came out with no problem, but taking the other one out was a struggle. Too, it hurt.  I easily replaced the first one when I got home.  I could not push the other one through my earlobe. I was back in my doctor’s office the next morning. He laughed and said he knew all about pierced ears, since he once had a part-time job doing just that. He inserted the post. I was jubilant until he told me I would have to treat that one like a new piercing.

As soon as I could, I began browsing earring counters in several stores, looking forward to the day I could enjoy my pierced ears. Then, to my disgust, I discovered that many of the earrings that appealed to me most were—you guessed it—the clip kind!