Of Earrings

My skin usually rejects any lesser metal than gold, with raging rashes within a couple of hours of using cheap metal or turning silver black faster than milk turns sour. But it’s so jang (old fashioned) to wear gold in this era of fashion. Platinum? White gold? Sure, but think of the many pieces I can get with the same amount if it were made from another material. (Okay, not really. I’m just not an accessories person so I use that as my excuse not to buy them.)

Anyway, my ex-colleague introduced me to Rhodium coated earrings last year. I finally had the chance to go to the shop in Sunway Pyramid and got myself these:

And it also made me remember how I got my ears pierced. I was five, in Penang for the weekend at Penang Plaza (known back then as FIMA). There was a promotion at the foyer and Mum decided to have my ears pierced. Yup, right in the foyer, in front of a crowd of curious gawkers.

I remember sitting down on a plastic chair while the girl marked my earlobes with a pen. She sprayed something cool on my ear which tickled so I giggled. At the next instant, I saw her holding a gun and before I knew it, my right ear seared with excruciating pain. I screamed the place down, thinking I was shot, while attempting to cover my face from the audience with my Mum’s skirt as she was walking away.

Needless to say, my parents took me around walking after that, with a single pierced ear. I remember looking at my reflection as my Dad carried me. He tried to explain I look ridiculous with just one pierced ear, trying to cajole me to agree to having the other pierced. I don’t remember agreeing but there I was again, on the same plastic chair, with the horrible girl with the gun. Since it was late evening then, the crowd had thinned. But my reaction was exactly the same.

My parents must have been very glad there are only two ear lobes to be pierced.

So when in my teens, I was tempted to pierce a second hole in each ear in the heat of a fashion craze (I remember my friend's new piercings developed an infection and had to have her dad remove the earrings with pliers), thank heavens this vivid childhood memory stopped me from doing it again.