The Earring

In 1984, I decided to pierce my left ear. I did it myself with a bag of ice, a sterilized needle, and a bar of soap.

When my earlobe was sufficiently numbed by the ice, I put the needle through and into the bar of soap on the other side.

I pulled the needle out and tried to put the earring through the fresh hole. The problem was, I could not find the hole on the back side of my lobe.

I kept wiggling the post around in my earlobe, basically blending all the cells inside into a nice creamy texture.

At a point, the numbness began to wear off and I started feeling some twinges of pain. I decided to just push the post through the other side and get it over with before the numbness was completely gone. There was a solid pop when the post broke through the back of my ear and stabbed into my thumb.

The only real pain I felt was my thumb, which had been impaled.

Thirty-two years later, I went to Claire’s and had my right lobe pierced.

When I went to work the Monday following my self inflicted ear and thumb piercing, I caught flack from the men in the foundry while walking through their department.

I was a little frustrated with their immaturity. That fact must have been pretty obvious because, when I reached my department, my boss took one look at me and asked, “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

My boss, Bill, was a tough older man in his 70s with words tattooed across his fingers on both hands. He told me that he had been in a gang when he was young. Bill was on the shorter side but everyone respected him.

I told Bill, “It’s okay. I was walking through the foundry and the guys were hassling me because I got an earring.”

Bill turned to Dave, another experienced co-worker, and said, “Hey Dave, come over here and bring your finishing hammer.” He then turned to his work bench, grabbed a finishing nail, handed the nail to Dave, knelt down, and put his earlobe on the heavy wooden worktable. “Pierce my ear.”



Dave said, “Okay,” placed the nail on the center of Bill’s earlobe and hit the nail with the hammer, HARD. There were audible gasps from the other workers. Dave wiggled the nail back and forth and pulled it out of the wooden table, where it had been embedded, then stepped back.



Bill stood up, turned to his toolbox, opened one of the little drawers at the top, grabbed an earring out of it, and put it in his ear like it was just another normal day for him. He turned to face me. “They won’t bother you again.”


…and, they didn’t.

Bill was one of a handful of unexpected heroes in my life. Truly strong people use their strength to stand up for and advocate for others.

~ elr

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