Rites of Passage

Brushing my teeth before I go to bed, admiring what, for me, passes as a rich carpet of facial hair, I catch a glint out of the corner of my eye.

Funny how something you've worn for the last 8 years can surprise you all of a sudden.

I don't often think about my earring, though I sometimes catch myself tugging at it or worrying it.  Finding reassurance in its cool gleam between my fingers when I am nervous, but this is not a conscious act.  When I dress I never take my earring into account. As far as I am concerned my earring goes well with everything I wear and even when I take the time to preen over what I am going to wear, or if, rarer still I dress and then consult a mirror, I never pause to study the effect my earring has on the outfit.

My earring is simple and without frills.  Rectangular silver with rounded edges it is about a centimeter in diameter, making it slightly smaller than the dime I just wrangled up to my ear for comparison.

Quietly adorning my ear most people don't even realize it is there.  Many is the conversation I've had with people after I've known them for a couple years when they discover it.  We'll be in the middle of a conversation, standing around at a bar sipping our the beers, with dance floor that is still empty but the DJ is dancing around in his little booth like he is mixing for a sold out stadium, and they'll just stop.  The final syllables of what they were saying abruptly clipped off.

"Which is why communism is an eas-."  A puzzled frown and a cock of the head as they realize something try to compare my having an earring to what they knew before.   

Did he always have an earring?  They wonder to themselves. Or did he always have one and I just forgot?

"When did you get an earring?" they ask, still unsure of themselves.  They don't remember seeing it but can't rule it out completely.

"When I was 18."
"Huh.  Wait lemme see that."  After a moment of closer inspection.  "Did you really?  How come I have never seen it before?"
Now, I have never been very good at riddles.  So if any of the more socially adept out there have any idea how to answer this question by all means I would love to hear it.

Of course the very next question after when did you get an earring is why.
"A rite of passage," I'll reply if I am feeling particularly garrulous.

I don't trouble myself with explaining further.  Even those few friends I've tired to explain it to don't get it.  The furrows of their contracted brows deepen as they make an honest effort at understanding and come up empty.

I remember the day I got it done; it was my 18th birthday.

Climbing out of the car I take a moment to adjust my new super awesome leather jacket so that the thick red stripes, racing against the black, poured over my shoulders and down my arms.  Everyone at the mall, though they might not know it, has a deep seated needed to know how badass I looked, and I was not going to disappoint.

Today is a big day.

You can get your ear pierced when you are 16, but you must have a permission form signed by your parents.  Really, I'm pretty sure you can get your ear pierced even younger, you just have to go to the doctor to do it.  And oh yeah, your parents have to consent.

But today.  Today is a new day.  Gone are the days when I needed or cared about parental approval.  I am my own man today and I can do whatever pleases me.  To mark the occasion it just so happens that it pleases me to have my ear pierced.

Truth be told I actually decided I was going to do this a long time ago.  Furtively obtained images from the hip new M.T.V. channel of super cut beach going college guys with tribal tattoos and an earring, impossibly attractive women dripping from their arms, had seared themselves on to my teenage psyche.  I figured I'd grow into the muscles (I was later quite disappointed when I didn't) and I didn't quite know what tattoo design I wanted, so earring it was.

I had mentioned this desire to get an earring to my parents in passing.  They didn't seem to react one way or the other.  Not that I was asking for their approval or permission but I assumed this meant they were neither for nor against it.  Getting your ear pierced did not rate on the parental concern-o-meter.

I walk into the mall.  It isn't that crowded, just another Wednesday for most people, but the people who are there mercifully don't rush me for autographs or ask to take their pictures next to me in my super fly leather jacket.  Good thing because I got an ear to pierce, and afterwards I have to get back to the algebra sheet I still have to do for tomorrow, so no time for photo-ops.

I don't recall what the lady looked like.  I was going to do this but in the shadow of my brisk teenage swagger I was more than a shade anxious about how much this was going to hurt.

I had gone to a pet shop as a kid with my cousins where they let us interact with some of the animals.  When the cantankerous macaw they had perched on my shoulder decided my ear looked tasty and applied its beak to to it much like a set of wickedly spiked nut crackers I was not pleased.  Had I been older the eye watering would have been unmanly, as would the sharply rising cry I gave as I realized exactly what that wretched animal was up to.

The lady at the booth was nothing like the macaw.  Khaki pants and a collared polo shirt emblazoned with the company's logo, no sign of feathers anywhere.  She is nice.

"I'm here to get my ear pierced." I tell her in my most confident voice.
"Well come on in, and step right up."  She said with a flourish, opening a low swinging door in the counter to admit me.  "Lemme get you to have a seat right over there.  Give me one second and I'll grab the paper work."

I take a seat in the high movie director's type of chair she indicated.  She returned with a well worn clip board and a sheet asking for name and address and the like.  At the bottom there was a bit of legalese with two signature lines.  It was the standard fare of if I somehow manage to die getting my ear pierced by them my relatives can't sue the living daylights out of everyone.  The first signature line was for the participant, the one underneath it was for the parent or guardian of the participant should they not be 18.

I sign the first line with cheerful superiority.

She takes the clipboard back and looks everything over to make sure I filled out all the boxes.  I want her to look skeptical, to card me, and make sure I am 18, after all not just anyone can walk up and demand to have their ear pierced.

She smiles. "Alright, which ear we going for?"

I am terrified but I am going to do this dammit! And then I am going to show this thing to everyone.  This metal barb that I had had punched completely through my body.  No big deal really.  I mean, I guess it hurt.  The guy before me, a 250 lb biker with tattoos everywhere, he was wailed and sobbed from the pain, the guy before him fainted and had to be carried out by his friends, but I didn't really feel anything.

They would ooh and ahh and marvel at my pain threshhold to have voluntarily endured such a trial.  They would know without the shadow of a doubt that I was now a man.  The girls in my high school would throw themselves at me and the guys would all want to be me.

It looks kinda like a blue handled glue gun.  Or it does before she swings it to my head and I can't see it any more.  I sit totally rigid, sweaty hands griping the knobbed wooden arm rests of the chair waiting for the agony to come thundering down on me.  I wait for the sudden feeling that I just stuck one ear into a particularly angry garbage disposal.


Somewhere I feel a shallow pinch.  "Wait a minute, let me try that again.  It didn't go all the way through."

Another pinch.  "And done.  What do you think?"  She holds up a mirror.

I was in a daze and drenched in sweat.  I had hyped up the pain up in my mind so much that I was barely coherent.  I mumbled something about how cool it looked doing my best to keep my voice from wavering.  Getting up and walking back to the car without stumbling, because newly minted men do not stumble especially not while wearing their leather jackets, was a serious accomplishment.

Candidly speaking my peers were less than impressed by my self imposed rite of passage.  Most didn't notice.

I am ever so sure my teenage self was a bit miffed, but in retrospect I don't care.  Hell, I haven't talked to the people I knew in high school for years, since high school to be exact.

Finished brushing I spit toothpaste into the sink and contemplate if today's youth have any conception of a rite of passage over flossing.

I wonder if they know what it is to derive value and meaning from pain and suffering.  To feel that something has worth because they have sweated and toiled and endured to achieve it.  More precisely I wonder if they they know what it is to do this voluntarily.  If they would actively seek out an experience which demanded that they make a real sacrifice.  Not deciding between getting fast food today or tomorrow, but to try fasting even when their is food in the fridge, it give themselves a greater appreciation of having a full belly.

Done with flossing I gaze silently at my reflection for a moment.

I decide I don't know.

Even in my own experience my high school peers didn't get it, and I was usually too embarrassed to try and explain it to them.  I like to think that I am an articulate guy, but if I couldn't explain it to people what hope is there for the technology softened children accustomed to instant gratification?

Sure, the other half of me concedes.  That is all true but the economy is in the dumps and doesn't look to be going getting any better any time soon.  There are going to be a lot of children born into a world, where every choice is not a decision between two excesses, but between two hardships.  Do I buy the phone I want and need to keep in touch with all my friends and live on Ramen noodles for the next month or do I live without the phone and buy groceries?

Maybe that's what got us into this mess.  The economy was so flush with money we convinced ourselves that we could live in a world without the slightest inconvenience.  An immaculate dream without hard choices or real human cost.

We had no rites of passage to wake us up.