Ear Spiral

So one of our good friends, R, had her grandfather pass away last week. She's had something of an erratic family life, and was very close to him. An old navy man, he was adorned with numerous tattoos, including, on his left forearm, the traditional red heart with a banner across it. (Since he didn't have a steady girl at the time, he had his own name tattooed in the banner.) R sat by his bedside for two weeks staring at that tattoo -- and finally decided that, in memory of him, she would get the same tattoo and have it read 'Papa'. Aphrodite and I went along for the ride -- neither of us had ever seen a tattoo done -- and enjoyed ourselves immensely. R loved the final product.

However, one of the mysteries of a tattoo parlor is that, even if you're just accompanying a friend, it always seems to make you consider getting something done yourself. (Or, at least, it did me and Aphrodite.) We'd both toyed with the tattoo idea for years, but have yet to find anything that clicks and makes us go, "YES!" So we held out, but at one point, I wandered over to the opposite side of the store, where they did their piercings. "What would you pierce?" I asked Aphrodite and R. They mentioned various possibilities -- eyebrows, noses -- but there was nothing that felt quite right to me there, either.

Then, suddenly, I remembered something from my freshman year of college. A classmate had had an ear spiral (top image, NOT the bottom one), and I stared at it every day for the entire semester, marveling at how cool it was -- unique without being trashy. I hadn't thought about it in years, but standing there, I knew that was what I wanted.

I've got to wait a while -- from the research I've done on the internet, cartilage piercings take a long time to heal and can easily get infected, so I want to wait until I'm done training for the marathon in October and don't have sweaty hair falling over fresh piercings every day -- but if I still want it by the time the race is over, I think I'm going to do it.

Anybody out there have any piercings or tattoos? Any good stories associated with them? I'd love to hear them!