I’ll admit, I jumped on the body piercing ship long ago. It’s true – they are kind of addicting in a sick, body modification as art sort of way. You really can’t get a better adrenaline rush than the one that follows paying a total stranger to put a needle through part of your body.

Recently, I got my tongue pierced. Lucky number 15! I used to scorn mouth piercings as gross, but I was running out of things to pierce. I didn’t want to get my eyebrow, because I already have my nose done. I thought my face would look too crowded. If you are going to be a piercing addict, you at least have to make your face look balanced. Otherwise, you might end up looking silly.

For the past month or two, I had been tossing around the idea of getting my tongue pierced and it was only a matter of time before I acted on it. In this case, I needed a little moral support in order to actually go through with it. As luck would have it, one night I overheard two of my friends making plans to go get new piercings of their own. I took it as an omen, and we went off for a local parlor.

Now, as I said before, I am no stranger to the piercing needle. I got my ears done for the first time when I was a wee lass of five (it was my preschool graduation gift from my Grandparents.) Since then, I have gotten no less than a dozen more holes added to my body, including having my belly button done twice (not counting the time I tried to do it myself with a dull earring in the ninth grade. That lasted all of a day until I got scared that my parents would see it.)

I should be an old piercing pro, but this one terrified me. For some unknown reason, I had built this up in my mind and convinced myself that a tongue ring would hurt more than anything I could imagine.

Maybe I just can’t handle mouth pain. As a child, I usually waited for the dentist to pull out my loose teeth because wiggling them myself hurt too much. Even then, I would only let him touch my teeth after giving me several shots of Novocain.

I made it to the back room where the magic happens. I was elected to go first, because I was most afraid. Let’s face it, I was the only one who was remotely afraid. I asked him to rank the pain of a tongue ring in comparison to other rings that I have (he assured me that it would hurt far less than the cartilage in my ears and nose.)

I made a friend hold one of my hands, and a random employee who wandered into the room hold the other. In short, I acted like a small child, but it was worth the humiliation!

I finally worked up the courage, and the guy shoving the needle through my tongue was right. It didn’t hurt that badly! And now that the swelling has gone down, I can enjoy eating again and playing with my fun new tongue ring. And everyone in the shop was impressed at how well I screamed with a needle in my mouth.

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