Stupid Things I Have Done, Part IV

I spent a year abroad in Europe when I was 16, as part of an exchange program. I had never studied the country's language in school and basically knew nothing about the place.

I'm an only child, so I asked to be placed in a family with no kids my age in an urban area. I had to have my own room, I insisted. But I was a vegetarian, and that fact seemed to trump all else. I wound up in a small village whose name translates as "Gnome Home," where the air smelled distinctly of manure and the nearest city was an hour away by train. My host family was headed by a hard-working single mom with three kids, all around my age, one of whom thought meat was nasty. None of them spoke English.

My poor host mom! She worked three jobs. Worked her ass off for her kids. One was a Goth who had recently gotten chased by the police in a drunken mania, fallen off a bridge, jumped from a hospital window, and so on. The other was a roofer who enjoyed Metallica LOUD. The youngest, my host sister with whom I shared a small room, was into David Hasselhoff's pop oeuvre. I was a punky, arty type who owned the entire 4AD catalog.

After I started to understand some of what was being said around me, my host mom and sis and I began to get along. Eventually, we became buddies, and I learned a lot about their lives. I had to do lots of chores around the house, but I came not to mind that. I appreciated the lessons I learned about neatness, frugality, kindness.

Part of the program I was on included a mini-home stay in a really big city on the other side of the country. So, I left my bucolic working class environs for the bright lights. I had picked up the language with an unmistakable rural accent, which never ceased to amuse my temporary hosts. They were former diplomats, very cool and nice. They actually came to my first wedding. I still hear from them now and then.

Anyway, while there, I met some university students who were volunteering for our program. One of them was a beautiful gal with long black dreads and a nose ring. I knew I had to have one, especially since I had taken to dying my hair fire-engine red. This was long before the advent of piercing professionals, in the long-lost age of DIY nose piercing. So, I asked her how she had done it and she explained that it was really easy and basically painless. You numb your nose with ice, sterilize a needle in boiling water, put something like a carrot up your nostril for resistance, and go for it. Quickly stick a sterilized stud in there and voila! Nose ring.

When I returned to Gnome Home, I decided one fine morning to pierce my nose. I had the house to myself, strangely enough. This being Europe, there was no ice to be had. So I went down into the cellar and fished out a huge slab of deep-frozen meat. There, I also found a large, nobbly carrot. Too excited to sterilize anything, heart aflutter, I shoved the meat slab against my face for as long as I could take it. Soon, I'd lost feeling in my nose. I stuck the carrot up my far too small nostril and without taking too much time to figure out the most attractive location for my nose ring, bam! It was done. I had a needle through my nose.

I then realized that I really didn't have any appropriate stud on me. Shit. I riffled through my earrings, and was dismayed to see that the only really stud-like thing I had was a fake pearl earring. The fake pearl was huge and looked like some odd growth sprouting from my nose. But it was in, and I was on my way to infinite coolness.

It's really hard to conceal a newly inserted nose ring from your host mom when it's a honking faux pearl sticking out of the side of your face. I did my best, but I failed, and my poor host mom cursed me firmly in dialect, asking me what she was supposed to tell my parents when she sent me home all maimed.

The drama soon passed. I found a better stud and wore a nose ring for two or three years. Until I noticed that all kinds of people had them at my college. It was too trendy to be cool anymore, I remember deciding in a huff, and out it went.