Getting My Ears Pierced

I don’t remember the exact year, but D and I decided we wanted our ears pierced.  My mom had hers pierced a year or so earlier.  The earrings for pierced ears were so much prettier than clip-ons.  It was arranged for a friend of my mom’s sister to pierce the ears of two cousins, D, and me.  One cousin backed out, but three of us went through with it.  We had to rub our earlobes with our thumbs and forefingers.  I think this was supposed to numb our earlobes; it didn’t work.  Then with a pencil, the lady made a mark on each side of the earlobe to show where the hole would be.  She then took a large needle with thread that had been soaked in alcohol and pushed it through the earlobe into a piece of soap that she held to the back of the earlobe.  After that, she tied the thread into a loop.  It wasn’t tight; it looked like a little loop earring.  For several weeks, we put Campho-Phenique on our earlobes and loosened the thread from the skin by pulling the thread around through the hole.  Owwwww!!!  (This was to keep the holes from scabbing.)  After that, we started using rubbing alcohol.  It was really painful at the time, but I have never regretted having my ears pierced. 

D and I used to pretend we were bullfighters and bulls.  We would take a little doll blanket and use it as the bullfighter's cape.  One day after we had gotten our ears pierced, D was the bull and I was the bullfighter.  One of her earrings got caught on the blanket.  It tore her ear a little.  Ever since then she can't wear a heavy earring in that ear because the earring "droops" down and looks funny.

In the 1970s I had a second set of piercings in my earlobes.  One of my sisters-in-law did it.  She used a needle after I had numbed my earlobes with ice.  She pushed the needle through, and then immediately put a pair of stud earrings into the new holes.  The healing process that time was a lot less painful and shorter.  Thank goodness for the NEW technology.  Ha, ha, ha.  Not long after that, I met a lady who said that is was barbaric to have my ears pierced twice.  I wonder what she thinks about all the piercings that people have today.

   Click on photo for a better view of my ear that made me barbaric!