Day 29 of a 30 Day Blogging Challenge: Piercings and Tattoos

This is a simple and fun prompt for writing. It is obviously aimed at younger writers, I think, though plenty of people my age (61 years old) do have piercings and tattoos. With the peer group I have right now, these body alterations are mainly limited to pierced ears and veterans from the military who got anchors or an image of their Marines unit or Mom tattoos.

Piercings

I have pierced ears. It started to be a thing when I was a kid/teen in the ’60s and ’70s. I grew up in a fairly conservative family in a very small farming town. My sisters and I (one sister a year younger and another sister 2 years younger tham me) didn’t even think to ask if we could have pierced ears. Our parents weren’t the ‘give-in-to-fads’ or ‘spend-money-needlessly’ type of parents and none of us were particularly rebellious.

However, one Saturday, when I was in 7th grade, my sisters and I were hanging out with Mom at a mall in a neighboring town. She wandered into a jewelry store and just casually said, “Let’s look at earrings.” She steered us towards the earrings for pierced ears. My sisters and I looked at each other with amazement, but none of us asked her any questions. I think we were worried we’d jinx this amazing development if we said anything. We walked out of the store with 4 pairs of gold earrings.

When we got home, Dad was waiting with a needle, alcohol and ice cubes. Yikes! We all froze our little earlobes into red and flesh-colored icicles and Mom went first!!!!!! We watched with varying expressions of fear, excitement, horror, and fascination as Dad swabbed one earlobe, then the other with alcohol and put an ice cube behind one of Mom’s earlobes. The needle went in true and fast as Mom gave a little squeal and Dad fastened the first piece of gold in place. Then he swabbed it with alcohol again, which brought out a louder screech of pain.

He pierced our ears, one at a time, until he had decked out eight separate earlobes with pretty little stud earrings. Amongst ourselves, later that night, we girls decided that Mom really wanted her ears pierced and knew she wouldn’t get away with having hers done and not letting us do it, too.

Those are the only two piercings I have… one in each earlobe.

Tattoos

I have no tattoos, but have the vision of what I would like if I ever have the funds. I mentioned once within the hearing of my kids that I’m sure I’ll never get a tattoo, but that I think it would be kind of cool if I did. They all almost jumped out of their chairs with curiosity and amazement. They all assumed that I am totally against tattoos (probably in the same way that we never asked mom and dad for pierced ears).

I do know what I’d do if I did. I broke my arm pretty badly several years ago because of my kids. I literally fell over backwards onto an outstretched hand as I was trying to untangle a pile of the kids’ bikes that that been tossed in a heap after a day of riding. I wanted to mow the lawn and needed the bicycles out of the way.

The break required surgery and I have a long scar on both sides of my forearm. I envision a tattoo of some type of band around my arm above my elbow, then a flutter of several strings of feathers down the scars with all of my kids’ names, one on each feather. Since my kids are all Native American, it would have a dreamcatcher/medicine wheel vibe. And with 10 kids (so far), that would be 10 feathers, creating a sleeve-like effect on my forearm. To me, that image describes much of my life… my kids, our Native American community and activites, and the joy and pain (emotionally and literally) of parenting.

Would anyone like to sketch up their vision of what I’m trying to describe? Then I’d be already to go if I ever win the Lottery (I think winning the lottery was one of the previous posts in this series and I didn’t even mention my tattoo vision. Sheesh! LOL)

Aside from any sketches you’d like to share, I’d surely enjoy piercing and tattoo stories from you all.