Randomly Accessed Memories

Due to a general lack of inspiration and few promising suggestions for a new obsession (43 things, maybe. Take up tae kwon do, seriously?), I will be writing about random memories and people I know until I think of something better. For today, it's going to be as simple as tattoos and piercings.

I left for college with the standard two pierced ears. At some point during the first semester of my freshman year, I woke up with my left ear throbbing. When I felt it, I discovered my basic gold post missing, and a new hole with a tiny diamond earring right above. A little while later, I ran into a friend wearing what appeared to be my earring. Turns out, at some point the night before I had agreed to trade with him and pierced a new hole.

Number four, third on the left side? Not a clue when or how it got there.

Number five, I remember well. It had become a running joke that every time I came home to visit, I had a new piercing. I was headed home the summer after my sophomore year with no piercing to show. So completely sober, in the light of the afternoon, I held a piece of ice to the back side of my right ear until the place where the cartilage begins was numb, and then I poked an earring into place. It hurt like crazy, but I liked the way it balanced out the three in a row on the other side

My senior year, I was thinking about a tattoo. I was living in a place where tattoo parlors were illegal, but I worked with a guy who had learned to ink in prison. I talked to him about it, and was working up the nerve when he suddenly quit coming to work and that was the end of that.

Since then, I have let all of the piercings except the original two close, and I have been grateful many times that I did not pursue the idea of a tattoo.