What's your earliest memory?

Today's assignment is to write about my earliest memory. It's rather funny, and from when I was three-years-old so I'm told.

I remember Mama and her mother taking me into a local jewelry store. They talked to this guy, and next thing I knew he was setting me up on this really high stool. Well, really high from a three-year-old's perspective in any case. He drew on my ears with a pen, which tickled, and I thought was kind of odd. If I'd drawn on myself, I would have gotten told off and a swat or two.

Then he called a woman into the room, and had her stand on the other side of me, handing her this weird looking purple thing. I was starting to get kind of worried, but Mama and Granny were standing there in the door, watching and smiling, so it couldn't be bad, right?

"Okay, see I have this little gun here," the guy said, showing me his own weird looking thing. It was some kind of gun apparently, and green, very green. He moved it to my ear. It was really cold. "I'm going to count to three. We'll shoot, and it'll all be over," he said.

I looked to Mama and Granny, expecting them to come running in and save me. Daddy had guns. I knew what they were, and what they could do, and that I should never, ever go near them. Here I was with two guns pressed against my ears. The man and woman were already counting, and Mama and Granny were still standing in the door smiling like it was no big deal!

I started crying even before they reached three. When I felt the pinch of the studs piercing my ears, I cried harder, imagining great big holes in the sides of my head.

It took them a while to calm me down after that.

So that's it, my first memory, getting my ears pierced, and a guy with no idea how to explain the procedure to a preschooler in a way that won't freak them out. It's also why I'm not about to get my girls ears pierced. They can ask when they're older and have some clue what's coming.