My wife and I have been together for nearly two decades, so it’s fairly rare for her to do something that takes me completely by surprise.  Her announcement that for our daughter’s eighth birthday she was taking Ri-ri to get her ears pierced floored me.  You could have knocked me over with a pair of those purple feather earrings from the 80s.

To me it seemed kind of sudden, and a big step toward being a big girl.  I was unsure if Ri-ri was really ready.  Wasn’t this a kind of coming-of-age thing?  Maybe freshmen year in college would be more appropriate.  I needed some time to do some research, find out what best practices are, poll Twitter, check the AAP recommendations.

My twenty years of experience in a relationship helped me to quickly arrive at a strategy for communicating my concerns: I kept my damn mouth shut.

After all, this is a girl thing (though there has been a lot of talk in the house about the earring I wore until my oldest repeatedly pulled it out as an infant). As I was given deference on the matter of circumcision, so I deferred on the matter of ear piercing. Maybe that’s a bad parallel.  Anyway, I decided to follow my wife’s lead.

These things are done at the mall now (piercings not circumcisions) in a chair that backs up to the glass front wall of the store.  It seemed much less antiseptic, and much more public than such rituals might ought to be, but again I kept my mouth shut.  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to attend.  Wasn’t this a female thing?  Plus. I might pass out.

So I grabbed the boys and went to the Apple store.