It’s strange, the secrets we keep and for how long. So funny when we forget something was even a secret in the first place.

Yesterday I was thinking about when I had gotten the back of an earring stuck in my ear. I was 9 or 10 years old and we had gone to Disneyland in the middle of February. My mom warned me to make sure my earrings stayed on real tight on the rides or they might fall out. This scared me, and I kept checking my earrings, making sure they were screwed on as tight as possible. Well, at some point after our trip, I realized that the back of my earring had gotten half way sunk into my ear. I managed to take the post out and tried to pick and pull at the back of my earring, but it remained inside my ear.

I went to my mom and asked her, hypothetically, what would happen if part of my earring were to get stuck into my ear. My mom was REALLY big on talking about hypothetical problems, and how they could lead to our deaths. No, really, it shocked people who came over how often my mom would talk about our deaths. She once told me that if I didn’t clean my room, there would be a fire and then I wouldn’t be able to find my way out with all the mess. My dog and I would be trapped up in my attic bedroom and two firemen would have to go come looking for me, who would then get lost in the mess, and they too would perish, so if I didn’t get my ass upstairs and clean up that mess two firemen, my dog, and myself would all die in the fire that was sure to happen if I didn’t clean my room.

So, me asking her about what would happen if part of my earring were to get stuck in my ear really excited her. She told me all about how we would have to go to the hospital and they would slide my ear open, possibly put me under for surgery, and they would have to remove the piece of earring and how I would have to have stitches, and how it would really hurt. As a child, I was always extremely terrified of the possibility of having to have stitches. She also said that if I didn’t go and get the piece removed, the metal would give me an infection in my blood stream and travel to another cut somewhere on my body, go through my heart, and kill me.  She then asked me why I had asked.

Terrified, I told her I was just curious.

I concluded that obviously this situation was much more complicated than I had anticipated, and it would be easier to try and figure it out myself, or die trying. This sounded much better than going to a hospital and possibly dieing there.

So, every night, sometimes for hours, I picked at the earring in my ear, but it only seemed to be getting sunk farther in there. I always wore my hair down and was careful to keep my ear hidden.

A full year later, on a night in February, I was laying in bed playing with my ear and suddenly part of the earring-back came out—through the front of my ear! It hurt, it was disgusting, but it was gone! The feeling of relief was like nothing else, it was finally over! I wanted to go shouting my victory to everyone, but alas, it was a secret.

Five years later my younger sister Violet was going to the doctor with my mom-because she had gotten an earring post stuck in her ear! I desperately wanted to tell her all about what had happened to me, but was still afraid of getting in trouble, so I didn’t tell anyone.  Violet had the earring removed at the clinic and it had been no big deal. No one died, Violet barely even cried, and the day ended with an ice cream sundae.

Last night I had randomly been thinking about the earring experience I had, and remembered  that I had never told Violet about it. I called her today to fill her in. It felt so strange to tell her about something so many years later, and it got me thinking about all the things that she had been present for and probably didn’t know about. With the way we grew up, we kept a lot of things to ourselves because fear was a large ruling factor in our lives.

I wonder how many of my memories are drastically different from her perspective because she had information  I didn’t, and vice versa?