By Jennifer Carrasco

When Norma and I first started our Peace Corps teaching at Sorsogon Pilot School, it was hard for us to tell the students apart.They were beautiful kids, brown skinned with shiny black hair and flashing white teeth, but there weren't any red heads, brown heads or blond heads to help us distinguish one child from the other.  They all wore the same uniform..a brown cotton skirt or shorts and a pale yellow shirt.
Jennifer teaching 3rd graders english in 1966.

One thing we did notice, although it didn't help identify the student, was that each little girl had a gold stud in each ear.  Very pretty. So Norma and I decided we needed to have our ears pieced as well. This was at a time when young women (read white American girls) usually didn't have pierced anything. It was considered a bit outré back in our US hometowns. So of course we wanted to have it done.

We went down the street to ask Dr. Salvador if he would do the ear piercing. He agreed, and after he pierced our ears, he ran a thick black thread through each piercing and painted each of our ears with Mercurochrome. That gave us alarming orange ears with black string "hoop earrings". As the pierced hole started to heal, we were supposed to gently pull the string back and forth to keep the space open. Dr. Salvador offset my left ear piercing a bit, so I've been unbalanced ever since. 

Our pupils had no ends of fun with the weird habits of Americans on that one.

When my Grandma Mimi was given diamond posts from Grandad for their 50th Anniversary, she had her ears pierced by Dr. Weiland. Of course being the McCabe family, there was a big to-do and Uncle Jim, Uncle Bert and my Dad insisted she lie down on the breakfast table as Dr. Weiland pierced her ears while her sons teased her unmercifully and made her drink a martini from a straw "as an anesthetic"

Then around the 1990's in Seattle, girls started piercing everything. Nostrils, eyebrows, lips, bellybuttons, even nipples and nether parts. I remember one of my middle-aged friends being flummoxed when a young woman told him she had her nipples pierced with small rings "for the skin rush" Piercing was also supposed to release bad energy.

When my high school graduate niece Jessica and her bestie Jessica came over from my tiny hometown of Pomeroy to visit Auntie J (me), we had a big agenda of dashing around the city. 

One of the things both Jessicas wanted to do was have their belly buttons pierced. So I looked up piercing establishments and found a likely one named, "We Pierce Any Fruit" on Capitol Hill. We found the place on Broadway and walked into the waiting room a few minutes before our appointment. A cute little lesbian girl with blue hair tried to chat the girls up, but the two girls sat there primly with their ankles crossed and ignored her until they had their appointments. Did I mention that my niece's bestie Jessica was the daughter of Pomeroy's Nazarene preacher and my niece Jessica's Dad was a judge? Anyhow, a bluff and hearty butch lady was the "surgeon" for the belly button piercing and both Jessicas were happy with the outcome. And a Surprise! Surprise! for Mom and Dad when the girls returned home.

Then we went out for dinner and walked down to a little theatre in Fremont where the play was a mashup of Shakespeare's works performed at quadruple speed by men in drag. They dashed in and out of the stage, ripping off clothes and hopping into clothes with no act getting more than 5 minutes each. I think the girls were impressed.

Nothing like that in Pomeroy. 

Jennifer Carrasco is a longtime West Seattle resident and internationally recognized muralist whose work combines historical depth, mythic storytelling, and botanical elegance. With decades of experience painting large-scale trompe l’oeil and chinoiserie murals for clients ranging from Tommy Bahama to private collectors, she brings a distinctive Northwest voice to decorative arts. Her artistic journey has taken her from Peace Corps service and teaching in the Philippines to NEA residencies across the globe, and long ago she chose to make West Seattle her home.