Friday, April 30, 2010

EARRINGS OR LACK THEREOF (AKA NAKED EARLOBES)

This post is for my friend T.  She has seen this side of my personality and insists that it will "help" if I talk about it.  She's a tall, beautiful woman with long, curly, red hair, and nobody notices if she has on earrings or not!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  But I'm trying to calm my inner demons lately, so here it goes...

I have an obsession, or compulsion, whichever, or both.  WHATEVER!  Ok, more than one, I know.
BUT, one of them is being without earrings.  I HATE, I HATE, I HATE to get to work or anywhere else and realize that I forgot to put on earrings.

My earlobes do not always alert me soon enough about the missing accessory so it's usually when I'm in the middle of a conversation with someone else that I suddenly get this little tingle, a little flip in my stomach, OH MY GOD I FORGOT MY EARRINGS.  And I know those people are thinking wow this woman could really use some earrings!

And once I know I'm earring-less I have a hard time getting through the day.  I can't finish a thought coherently.  I can't stay on task.  I can't remember what it was I was going to do or why I was in the alcohol section of the grocery store - it's that bad.

Honestly.  I wish this wasn't true about me but it is.  There are many, many things that I could leave home without and not be bothered. . .makeup, brushing my hair, my purse, matching shoes, even my phone.  But not having on my earrings is the end of my motivation to get through the day.  It's just over for me - just going to chalk the day up to a dud and start over tomorrow. 

And they have to be floppy, dangly things that bang into my neck all day long to remind me that they're there.  Things that get hung up in my hair or my purse strap or the I've-worked-here-for-20years-and-I-still-have-to-wear-this-id  necklace that my employer requires me to wear.  My friend, B, wears beautiful little pearl earrings.  I wish I could do that.  Can't.

I have gone to Stein Mart on a  $7-earring-lunch-run many times over the past 9 years.  I pulled these out tonight because I'm pretty sure that these were all purchased in my "oh shit I forgot my earrings" panic.  And NONE of them seem to make it to my desk at work as a back-up.  I can't remember to take them BACK to work so they're there when I need them.  Again, I just never learn the lesson.


I can go out of the house in many scary forms of attire.  If I don't have a reason to put on make up and "decent" clothes I JUST DON'T DO IT.  I could have on my holey sweats, my favorite paint-splattered Chicago tshirt, or any number of other, sad, pathetic, worse-than-homeless-looking, usual articles of clothing, but I will always have MY EARRINGS on, damn it.

Unless I forget them.

1 comment:

Brenda said...

I'm thinking colored paper clips (I know you have them in myriad colors), twisted together, could do the trick anytime this happens to you at work!