My Mumbling Thoughts

I have a piercing on my face.

Just a little one. The technical term is a "labret," but that word tends to scare people for some reason whenever I say it out loud. It rests in between my chin and lower lip, right in the middle looking dainty and not causing any problems or any harm to anyone. It's very small, but for me it holds so much.

Whenever I go on an interview, I always pause and wonder if I'll take it out and temporarily replace it with a clear stud that isn't anywhere near as cute and surprisingly more irritating than my metal studs; the clear ones are more acceptable, though, and what I consider to be a compromise between what I like and what the company considers to be distracting. Sometimes I take it out, and other times I simply leave it in because I can't be bothered to take it out. I think, what's the point? If I do manage to get the job I'm not going to want to take it out every single day and replace it with a clear stud. They should know that I have it and accept it straight away. My argument is, why should I remove something that reflects in no way my abilities to do the job? It's a piercing, not some kind of disability.

This past Saturday, Momma, Mel and myself all went to Cracker Barrel for breakfast with one of Momma's friends, Janet. We were all sitting there eating our breakfast when Mel pointed out to me that one of the chefs had a hair net over his beard, which was very long and Santa-like. I then said that it was cool of the restaurant to give him the option of wearing a "face-net" rather than saying that he had to shave it off, or work in a different part of the restaurant where his long beard wouldn't be as much of a distraction.

That started off a friendly debate between Janet and myself over what is considered appropriate for work/different businesses and what it means for people who must change in some way to conform to a more "society appropriate" look. Mel rolled her eyes and occasionally Momma would pipe in with her two cents, but mostly it was Janet and I going back 'n' forth over people's personal looks and the companies that want to change them.

Janet brought up a lot of good points that I normally wouldn't take on board (because in this case I believe to be right and everyone else is wrong) and assessed that while companies shouldn't "judge a book by its cover" so to speak, everyone knows that first impressions are keen, and not just on interviews. The way people dress, the different kind of styles they have and so forth is an extension to some point of their personality. While a person's piercing(s), tattoo(s), dreadlocks or whatever doesn't necessarily mean that they're incapable of doing a certain kind of job, those looks do normally indicate that perhaps they have a more experimental side to themselves, a wild or radical side even, that a company might want to be aware of.

She then pointed out to me that while 98% of my look suggests that I am conservative, this one tiny piercing on my face says that I'm a risk taker and don't mind living a little dangerously, which to be honest, is very true. Whether we realize it or not, the way we represent ourselves in day-to-day life speaks volumes about who we are as a person. There are many, many, many studies out there that have proven this fact on more than one occasion.

So we continued our chat and she carried on to say that everyone's look changes over time, because we change as people. She knows people who started taking out their piercings as they got older, or would cover up their tattoos and would change because they were leaving their younger self behind and growing up into their adult self who was now accepting all of their new responsibilities. There would be no more partying and living like a crazy heathen (or a lot less of it), and they instead traded it all for the Corporate Office, dry cleaned suits and a more "grown-up" look. It's just that next step that a lot of people take at some point in their life.

I got to thinking about it, and it all made perfect sense. I know it seems so blatantly obvious now, but I was so hell bent on making my point over my tiny piercing that I blocked out all other opinions. I also think that I was so defensive about leaving my piercing in because in all actuality, I don't want to make that next leap into "adulthood." It isn't really about the little stud, because I know what it is for me and I could care less what other people think. It's really about the "growing up" part and saying a final farewell to my Student Self. All summer I could pretend that I wasn't really leaving, but now that university has kicked back into full gear and I'm not apart of it, there's not much I can really do except say goodbye and accept this new phase in my life that I'm entering.

I'm going to be turning twenty-four this week. I'm going to be one year older and no more wiser than I was last year. I am growing up, one day at a time, and I need to get it through my thick skull that my days of lazing around and careless living are over. I'm not a student anymore. I'm going to be a full-time worker at whatever job decides to hire me and have to start acting like an adult. I guess it all has to happen to us at some point.

But I'm leaving my little piercing right where it is, as a reminder of my Peter Pan days, and any company that doesn't accept it can sod off. That part is staying with me, even if it's not who I am anymore.