It's so easy to blame Mom, isn't it? I first started seeking to modify my ears way back when in elementary school, with a second pair of lobe piercings. Several of my classmates had managed to gain permission from their mothers to have theirs pierced in a cheap mall shop with a gun, but my mother never budged. One spring afternoon on a weekend, I got my older cousin Alex to pierce my earlobes again for me. He told me to ice my right ear, grabbed a cheap gemmed stud, and mentally marked a spot next to my existing lobe piercing. On my count of three he rammed it in, and I was sore, but glad that I was at least half way through. I iced my left ear and repeated the same procedure, but with my squirming around Alex couldn't quite get the stud all the way through. I told him that I'd let him finish later, but he never got to it. I wasn't too worked up about it though, since two piercings in my right ear was cool enough for any 11 year old. Unfortunately though, I woke up with my right ear pounding like crazy a few mornings later, to find that I had rolled over onto the stud in my sleep and that it had lodged itself into my ear. My first reaction was shock, but I thought it was quite funny and showed Alex. But it wasn't as funny that night when my mom saw and forced me to push the entire stud out of the hole in the front, which had shrunken considerably by then.
At A Glance Author Ligo Contact nekoligo@yahoo.com IAM Ligo When Two years ago Artist Herself Studio At home Location Bronx, NY
It was only a year or so later that I got the inspiration to stretch my ears when I saw Tommy Lee on that ridiculous college show and noticed his stretched ear piercings, small eyelets with CBRs dangling from them. I did a quick Google search on stretching ears and realized that I could do it myself in my own home. I found a needlepoint needle and pushed it into my right ear as far as it would go before I decided that the stinging sensation couldn't be good and removed it, replacing it with my cheap metal hoop earring. My right ear piercing became mildly infected, oozing thick lymph and pus and becoming stiff. I treated it with rubbing alcohol and let it clear up before my second attempt at stretching.
After more research on the subject of stretching, and only slightly wiser, I went out to buy a cheap comb with small plastic teeth and brought it home. I ripped out two of the teeth, dabbed them with alcohol, lubed them up, and pushed them into my ears. My left ear was stretchier than my right, because the right had tightened up after the infection, but it didn't occur to me that I should have taken stretching as slow as possible and not have rushed anything. I needed the teeth in my ears to be even, so I forced my right ear to accept the comb's plastic tooth as much as possible and left it. My right ear developed another mild infection.
A while later, after the discovery of BME and realizing that what I was doing was remarkably stupid, I sought to buy a 14ga circular barbell from a beauty shop near my middle school. It was of pretty low quality, being 3LVM stainless steel, but having a poor polish. I took it home, boiled it, swabbed my left ear with rubbing alcohol, and popped it right in. No sweat so far. The next week I bought a second circular barbell and repeated this with my right ear, which had mostly cleared up by then. I cleaned my ear, did my best to remove what I could of the scab, and put it in with no fuss at all.
When I decided that I wanted to stretch up again, I must admit that I had regressed in my methods and wasn't too smart about it. My methods involved ink cartridges from pens and pieces of coffee swizzles wrapped in PTFE tape in order to get me to 8ga. After that point, I wrapped my 14ga circular barbells in PTFE tape (which I learned was my friend) and maintained a nice 3mm for a while, pictures of which can be found somewhere on my IAM page.
I stretched from 3mm to 4mm, and took a trip to the mall with a friend of mine, when I found a god-awful store that sells poor jewelry among other things and found a surprisingly good deal in a pack of a pair of 4ga plugs and 4ga pinchers for only $19.99. I got home and tried to ease it in and I only managed to keep them in for about an hour total, since I realized that it was too much of a stretch at the time and I should have left it for later.
My stretches from 4ga to 0ga were pretty uneventful, but at 0ga I was forced to turn back from whence I came. My mother started showing her opposition to my stretching at 2ga, when I showed her a pair of see-thru acrylic plugs, but when I bought silicone 0ga eyelets, the shit really hit the fan. She begged and pleaded and cried (no joke) and threw tantrums and spazzed and treated me like shit for a week before I took them out. Our bargain was that I would stop stretching and she would continue to supply me with an Internet connection. I stopped stretching, but I never returned to wearing "normal" earrings. I currently hover somewhere between 6 and 4ga, with heavy jewelry stretching my ears all the time. I have no doubt that I'll make my way up to 0ga and wear my silicone eyelets again, but this time I'll definitely make sure to be more cautious and take it slower.