Next time
I had full intentions on making a finance blog, but I made one post and it had one reader. ME.
Where’s Cindy when she could actually be a useful idiot?
In any event, my second post was going to be about when I was first aware of money.
It took me a long time to recover this memory. But I think I was 10.
Mom and I were going to get our ears pierced at Merle Norman.
What I didn’t realize at the time was the service was $10 for basic earrings. And my grandparents came with $20 cash.
I went first. But I didn’t care about the stupid gold or silver balls they had available. I wanted the emeralds (probably cubic zirconia), which were $15.
Everyone said great, let her get what she wants. And Mom said “next time” for her.
See, my little-girl brain only focused on what happened to me.
Which was that I got the earrings I wanted. And that the girl who pierced my ears screwed up.
She pierced one ear but it went in crooked. So she took her talons (for real, her nails were hella long) and dug the stud out of my lobe.
She re-pierced it.
I remember letting that hole close up after I waited the six weeks. I struggled to get the back of the earring off. And I tore the hole even wider.
So there went $15. And I never went back to Merle Norman.
But my adult brain has finally grasped that Mom never got her ears pierced, ever.
Like, I blew her chance because I was greedy.
I did that with bedrooms too. When she got divorced, we shared a bedroom in my grandparents’ house.
But then we moved and I said I didn’t want to share the bigger room with Mom. I wanted the littler room so it could be mine.
No one argued.
My grandfather got the bigger room. My great-grandmother got the other little room.
And Mom and Gram slept on the couch.
I mean it’s fucked up and you can’t blame a then 12-year-old for what she wanted.
And I wouldn’t want anyone blaming them for not saying no.
They knew their little girl loved her birthstone and wanted her ears pierced — they made it happen.
They knew their not-so-little girl was a tweenager and had friends over from time to time — they wanted me to have my privacy.
I learned in time that Mom would use my room to take naps during the day.
I also remember when she and Jimmy broke my bed. Hah.
Eventually my great-grandmother passed, and Mom and Gram shared that bedroom. And eventually I moved out.
Though I wasn’t gone but two weeks before Gram had her stroke and was confined to a hospital bed in the living room.
I always knew Gram worried about us. I think the stroke was a direct result of worry about Mom’s terrible relationship choices and my decision to move out. (She wanted me to commute.)
Oh and mom ended up dating the paramedic. (Jimmy.)
Man, if she hadn’t had that stroke, we wouldn’t have had to deal with his shit? Christ.
In any event, with my Pittsburgh trip looming, all this is shaking loose from my brain.
I wish today me could send that $400 to 10-year-old me and buy my family lunch at Ponderosa to say thank you for my earrings.
Wonder what else they gave up for me. Now I’ll never know.