Dare Me to Pierce My Ear?

While student teaching, I was working with a crafts class, meaning that all projects in the class were three dimensional. The assignment in progress was to take a bunch of old garbage and a hot glue gun and start gluing until a “found object” sculpture was completed. Among the stuff available for the students to use was a small box that contained some old jewelry.

One tenth grade boy, while gluing his “stuff” together found a gold earring with the back still on it.

“Mr. *******? Dare me to pierce my ear?” he asks me.

I’m sure I had a disgusted look on my face just thinking about the diseases he would contract and the infection that would be inevitable. Obviously, he’s kidding, I tell myself. Of course a student isn’t stupid enough to pierce their ear during class with a dirty earring that was found in a pile of refuse.

“No, I definitely don’t. These are for the project,” I say. I continue making my rounds answering questions the students may have and giving suggestions for their projects.

Eventually, I return to the desk where the boy with the earring was. I am horrified and partially sickened to discover that he has in fact pierced his ear with the disgusting discarded earring. He had apparently pushed it through skin and cartilage then cleaned up any blood and put the back onto it. His ear had turned a bright pink.

I didn’t remain at the school long enough to see what kind of disease he’d gotten from doing this, but I made my cooperating teacher aware of the situation. She told me to ignore him and pretend I didn’t notice the earring in his ear. Done and done.