Pierced

When I was younger and dumber I thought I wanted my ears pierced. I wanted them pierced so badly that it was consuming my life. All my begging and pleading was to no avail, my parents hearts were hard and they maintained that I had to be twelve in order to pierce them. 

I wasted months trying to make a time machine before I realized that if others who were smarter than I had failed in this aspect I probably would fare no better. So I gave up the time machine. But not the idea of earrings.


If my parents didn’t change their minds then it would be a good three years before I could have the opportunity to bore a hole in my ears and stick sharp metal things in them. I didn’t want to wait that long to participate in such a desirable activity, so there were two options left. One, to perish of sadness and deprivation, or two, to take this thing into my own hands. Not being the type to perish, I chose number two. And plus, its easier to ask forgiveness than permission.


I waited until one night when I had been sent to bed, then sneaked out into my bathroom and shut the door. One of my friends had given me some studs, which had only added fuel to the fire, and now I brought these forth. I sat on the counter, and closing my eyes and screwing up my face, I stabbed a thick metal stud deep into my earlobe! I had thought that I had enough momentum to drive it all the way through, but it only went about halfway. So it took another couple of minutes of pushing and stabbing at my bloody ear to make a good hole. I washed off the blood and put the earring in, admiring myself for the brave, ingenious girl I was. Yes, I was gorgeous with that earring. But there was still another one to go.


About ten minutes later I poked my head out the bathroom, my glamorous ears glittering in the dim light. Now came the hard part. Breaking the news to my parents. I rehearsed a small speech to myself that I had planned for this occasion, filled with little tidbits about “this is my own life” and “these are my own ears” and “these are my own earrings” and “you didn’t want me to run away did you?”.


I walked in and sat on mom's bed next to her, with my hair tucked brazenly behind my ears. She didn’t notice. I fiddled with my ears. She didn’t notice. I finally grabbed the ends of my ears and thrust them toward her. She noticed.


Amid much wailing and gnashing of teeth I was hauled into dad for inspection. He laughed his head off, having more of an understanding of impulsiveness than Mom. Mom said he wasn’t much help. My earrings were taken forcibly from me, a feat accomplished by using rope, pliers, levers, and a lawnmower engine. I wasn’t going to give them up without a fight.


Finally I was sent back to bed, my ears cleaned and bandaged, and instructions to think about what I did wrong (I forget what it was.)


My ears healed right back up, and sadly, I don’t even have a scar to prove it.

Talent

I was born, lucky me, possessing a strange but useful talent. Actually, that is a lie, because I was not born with it, and didn’t even discover it until my baby teeth fell out and I got my new front teeth.


What, you may ask, is this talent? I will tell you. I am able to shoot a stream of water between my two front teeth by putting water behind my teeth and pushing with my tongue. I have deadly accuracy and a weird sense of timing, which work together to inspire dread in the souls of all I choose to employ this talent upon.


Anyway, last night at dinner my little six year old brother kept reaching across the table to get the food, instead of asking for it to be passed to him. This annoyed me, especially after he had been told to stop and continued. I decided to take the law into my own hands.


I waited until he did it again, looked to make sure that my parents were not watching, and shot a stream of water across the table at him. There was only one problem. He was at the end of the table, the furthest person away from me, so to make the water reach him I had to shoot it in an arc so it would clear the other people and only sprinkle him. In order to do this I had to shoot it high, and unfortunately it went through our low hanging light fixture and a light bulb exploded. There was a popping sound, a surge of flame, and shards of glass showered down upon the seated family. Our delicious stroganoff was filled with glass, it got in food on people’s plates, in their water, in the butter, and on the floor. 

The family sat in stunned silence. I was more silent then the rest. They began speculating as to why the light bulb would explode, but they didn’t know why, because I had spit the water so stealthily that nobody noticed. Except one person. My little brother that I had shot the water at. He soon pointed me out, and I was reprimanded severely (well, told never to do that again).


What I learned from this experience was the sad fact that, in addition to possessing appalling table manners, my little brother is a tattle tale. I must devise a new way of training him, as  this one has now been banned.

Can't

Throughout my life I have found very few things that I am unable to do. I am sure that all of you are under the impression that I am quite perfect, unable to do wrong. You are very close to right, but there are a couple items that have been discovered that show that I am still human, just like everyone else. I was shocked the first time I couldn’t do something, and brooded over it for weeks, so that I got frown lines at the side of my mouth. Then I realized that the reason I couldn’t do it was because I was doing it wrong. That explained it! So I hurried and did it right and I realized this important lesson:


IF YOU CANT DO SOMETHING IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG. WHEN YOU DO IT RIGHT YOU WILL BE DOING IT RIGHT.


Remember that everybody. It will help you out in your life.


But I have also realized that there are some things that people really CAN’T do because of the way that their body or mind is built. Most of the things that I really can’t do have to do with my mind.


One of the things that I discovered recently is that I can’t clean the house and listen to a radio theater production at the same time. Actually I didn’t realize this, it was my mom that did. I thought that I was cleaning, but apparently I was staring into space with my mouth hanging open. She pointed this out, I saw that she was right, so I began cleaning again. Two seconds later her voice again penetrated the happy fog that surrounded my mind, telling me that I was stopped. I looked. She was right. How silly. I wouldn’t stop this time.
Two seconds later it happened again. And again. And again. Once the radio theater production was over I could clean just fine. This bugs me.


Another thing I apparently can’t do is act normally when washing dishes. Mom looked at me when I was recently washing dishes, and my face had an incredibly delighted look upon it, as if washing the dishes was the best thing that had ever happened to me, which it is not. She burst into laughter, and as she did, I guess my face switched from incredibly delighted to deepest anger with a rapidity that was startling. She laughed for a straight half hour without stopping. As she was subsiding she looked at me again. I thought that I was singing silently, but she said that I was sticking out my tongue in all directions and making grotesque faces. This caused another burst of mirth on her part, which I feel was quite uncalled for. Silly mom. It wasn’t THAT funny.