When I was 13 I was a little rebel, darkening my eyes with eyeliner and religiously listening to Get Scared as if my life depended on it. To no one's surprise, almost nothing has changed! But 13 year old me had a dream, one I swore to accomplish in his name: having snake bites. Well, I'm happy to announce soon I'll have two titanium bars going through my lower lip like all the other cool kids.

This occasion had me thinking though, why not document the experience? Even better yet, why not document my experience with all the piercings I've ever had done before? So here I am, ready to share all that has happened since I first thought it would be a good idea to shove a needle into my flesh!

Warning!

I am not a piercer nor an expert in any way, I just wanted to write down some of my life stories in a funny format for documentation and entertainment. All the informations that'll be reported here will be the result of poor research and personal experience so take everything with a pinch of salt. That said, let's jump straight into the real story.

Earrings

Ah yes, the most vanilla of piercings, so much so that some people don't even consider it as such. Despise everything, this has made the list. Why, you might ask? Because of the circumstances in which I happened to get mines.

I was a child when I got my ears pierced for the first time, we're talking 9 or 10 maybe. This'll sound crazy to some people and, in part, I have to agree. But having earrings was a big thing when I was that young, all the cool kids had them and in my little peanut brain I associated them with fame. So there I was, asking my mom if she could take me to get my ears pierced.

I vividly remember her confusion as to why a 10 year old would want or even knew what earrings were. That might've been because I, in fact, didn't know. To be more precise: it's not like I didn't know what earrings were but I definitely didn't know what the process of getting your ears pierced was like. My mom briefly explained to me what it would be like: "They'll sit you down and shoot a jewel through your ear with a gun". As a kid, those words made me shiver; I had no idea there were guns purposely made for piercings and in my mind I visualised me, sat on a chair, used as a target in a shooting range. I never told my mom that, so she never had the occasion to reassure me that I wouldn't become swiss cheese. You'd think after imagining that I would've backed down, said "you know, maybe this isn't for me", but no, I was determined. I don't know where I had found all that courage seeing as I was a coward as a child. Eventually she agreed with one condition: someone else would've had to accompany me. Why? Well, my mom is deathly afraid of needles (and ironically, so am I).

We decided my grandma would be perfect and, after some convincing, we were set and ready to drive to the piercerrrrr... er... why were we in front of a stationery shop? Simple, my friend! Because back then pretty much anyone could pierce your body! I didn't know how dangerous it could be and neither did my grandma so we walked in anyways.

We were escorted to the back where they had put up a not-so-according-to-rule piercing station. I was asked to take a seat and relax while some woman prepared the machinery that was going to literally perforate my earlobes. Now, before seeing the piercing gun in that woman's hands I was completely carefree, as relaxed as one could be, but as soon as that thing entered my field of view I lost it. I was trembling like a chihuahua under anphetamines and my brain was screaming "DANGER" over and over. But I was there and I couldn't just leave, could I? I had to be cool, I had to have earrings! So I stood there, shaking, waiting for that lady to do her job and to subsequently die of a heart attack because of the fear.

So it happened, the first jewel went in. As I previously stated, I was a coward and at this point I had realised getting your ears pierced hurt so guess what happened right after? That's right, I started crying and screaming while bawling my eyes out. It took long minutes of negotiation to make stop but eventually they got me to sit still again. We had agreed on counting down from 5 before she would shoot the jewel through my other ear, which in my 10 year old brain meant that, somehow, the second one would hurt less. So she began counting: 5... 4... 3... 2... but she didn't even reach 1 before going for it. That caught me so off guard I jolted. Luckily that didn't cause any damage to my lobe but I remember the lady getting frustrated and panicky when she saw me jump like that. How could I blame her though? I would've panicked too if I thought I had just ruined a kid's ear. As I said though, everything turned out fine.

That day I left the shop weeping, desperate from the "awful" pain I had just underwent, without realizing I had just opened the door to the magnificent world of piercings to older me.

I don't remember how much pain I actually felt that day, I just remember being very dramatic about it, so I can't rate it on a scale 1/10 but I'll make sure to do so with the next piercing I'll write about. :)