Kids These Days

Greater than teen pregnancy or drugs or alcohol, the prevailing parental prohibition of my youth was ear piercing. My folks were agin it. Father said so many times it's seared in my aural memory that if any of us got our ears pierced we'd get our heads pierced, too.

And then, quietly, without fanfare, on the day of her eighteenth birthday, my oldest sister Carol went to the jewellery store - Bruinix - in downtown Trenton, and had her ears pierced. 

The sky did not fall. Father did not pierce her head. A precedent had been set.

The next one across the bright line was, of all people, my mother.

That was it. I got my ears pierced.

Back then you could wander into a jewellery store and have a retail clerk under not sanitary conditions use a sort of staple gun to install gold-plated studs through the fleshy, tender but comparatively blood-vessel-free part of your ear lobe. 

Then you were to turn the stud every day and apply copious amounts of hydrogen peroxide to your ear. Infections were common.

After I'd had my pierced ears for a while, I'd amassed a collection of single earrings, so I had another store clerk put another hole in my head some time in the mid-80's.

And that was it. As the years passed and tattoo and piercing parlours took an increasing share of the "do weird shit to your body" market, my flesh remained unsullied but for the three small additional holes in my ear lobes.

Until now.

I bought myself some sapphire studs for my birthday this year. I already have a pair of diamond studs that Bruce got me for Christmas a while back. That's four earrings. But I have only three holes.

You can appreciate my dilemma.

So I googled "best piercing parlour Toronto." Chronic Ink, three blocks from here on Yonge Street at Gerrard is the local favourite according to Yelp. I called to see if I needed an appointment. I didn't. But I did, said the young man on the phone, need to eat before I came. "For your blood sugar levels," he explained.

So, after lunch, I walked over to Yonge Street and up four flights of stairs (Chronic Ink is over the fine old bank building formerly occupied by the Elephant and Castle) and entered a space different from any I'd ever been in to date.

This was Monday, November 12 at about 2 in the afternoon. Four or five of the ten or so tattoo stations were occupied. The tattoo chairs were a cross between a chaise lounge and a dentist's chair, upholstered in black leather or leather-like material. There were lots of latex-free gloves and face masks. Everyone was twenty-five or younger.

Trying to blend in, I pulled out my phone and read Facebook posts while I waited.

I also filled in a form, signed a disclaimer, and bought, for about $100, the "jewel" that would be inserted in my ear lobe. The piercing itself was $25. 

Of course the person who provided the service was young enough to be my granddaughter. Everyone these days is.

She was pleasant and skilled and did her job with dispatch. I imagined it was one of the usual enquiries someone in her trade makes, to see if the customer has had any bad experiences with past piercings, when she asked me when I'd gotten the other piercings in my ears.

To my credit, I did not say "twenty years before you were born, dear." 

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen