My Trip to Claire's

Claire's is the pre-teen store where everyone my age spent hours at some point in their life browsing through cheap headbands and even cheaper jewelry. It was an essential stop on every trip to the mall. It is also a common site for the coming-of-age ritual of ear piercing.

I had my ears pierced somewhere around 11 years old. Then at some point, I went to Claire's and put a second hole in my left ear. Around the same time, I decided two holes in one ear was simply not enough. My friend Abbie and I set about to rectify my woefully uncool ear. I had no idea how to pierce ears, but she had apparently seen it in a movie and thus, was a pro. We took a regular sewing needle and lit it on fire (to sterilize it). I realize now this was absolutely insane, but at age 13, it seemed reasonable. Then we swabbed my ear down with rubbing alcohol. (It's probably a wonder we didn't try and sterilize my ear with fire!) For reasons now completely unclear, and that can only be attributed to the movie, we then cut a potato in half to put up against the back of my ear, for the needle to go into on the other side. Abbie bravely stabbed the needle through my ear, all the way into the potato, removed the needle and put in an earring.

At the time, I didn't realize that there are as many nerves in the ear as there are. We managed to hit one with the needle. I spent the entire night after the piercing unable to sleep and overwhelmed by pain and nausea. Finally sometime around 5:00 am, I took out the earring. That was the last time I tried to pierce my ears. Until yesterday.

Yuval hates jewelry rather passionately. When we were first together, I wore it anyway, but after a while (a really short while), I stopped altogether. When I wanted to wear earrings again for some occasion or another, I found that the holes had closed. Due to my new circumstances, I am rediscovering jewelry. My stepmother is supplying me (or rather, plying me) with bracelets and necklaces, and all of them come with matching earrings that I can't wear. After attending her bead show and finding a perfect pair of pearl and crystal earrings that I realised I needed to have, I called Abbie and told her it was time to go to the mall and get my ears pierced.

We drove down to the mall and found a Claire's that we had never seen before. Claire's functions a little bit like the wizard world in the Harry Potter books in that it exists alongside the real world and the muggles just don't see it. After the age of 18, Claire's ceases to be seen. But once we went looking for it, there it was.

Abbie asked me on the way in, "Are you nervous?"

"A little," I answered. "Remember, your job is to make sure they don't pierce them unevenly. You have a duty here! And, you have to take pictures."

I came in announced I wanted my ears pierced, chose my studs from among the options of fake diamonds and fake birthstones, signed the form, presented my ID (which was really rather flattering, although ridiculous), sat on the chair, and had a stranger punch holes in my ears. Abbie managed to be both the photographer and find a $2.00 headband.

We went and had sushi and shared a bottle of wine to celebrate. The waitress also asked to see our IDs, I think she was fooled by the Claire's bag on the table, and by Abbie trying on her new headband.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like a liberated woman," I said.