I got it done last week after absorbing the last needed amount of courage from my girls. I was taken back into a little office/medical room by an amazing young lady who had multiple piercings, tattoos, and was wearing black fishnet stockings under her denim shorts. I liked her instantly for her authentic, lazy manner. Nothing was going to alarm this woman. She would probably yawn while pushing the needle through.
She explained things to me and had me stand so she could clean and mark the places where the needle would go. Then I sat on the table while she carefully, while only touching the paper, opened the needle package, and the piercing package, dropping the items onto the clean sterile tray. Then she put gloves on and told me to lay back. She asked if I wanted the door shut for privacy. How comfortable not to care about it and I said, leave it open. There was a fan slowly blowing on the floor in the doorway, and right across the hall was a man in a chair with his back to me, getting a tattoo on his forearm. The two of them didn’t look our way once and were lost in their own conversation and work.
She readied the needle, which was about three inches long and rather thick, and said “Breathe in, and when I tell you to breathe out that is when I’ll insert the needle and then the piercing.” So I took a deep breath and when she said “okay, breathe out,” I felt the needle go through my skin and…….she mumbled, in her quiet yawning manner, “I’m sorry your skin…..it’s tough, you okay? There, it’s through…good…now the piercing jewelry is through, I’m all done, just turning the little top piece on, you okay? Now I’ll just clean you up, the purple marks, it’s not blood…..”.
I had felt like slow motions the stinging sensation of the needle going through my skin and then up and out of it again as she explained to me, in these simple words, “your skin is tough” and all I could think was a shocked, “My skin. It’s tough. I’m rather like an old hen at this point. If I WAS an actual chicken I would only be good for…….for the stew pot.” Wow, what a realization, I’ll tell you.
Oh well, at least this old hen has a beautiful belly button!!!
Good to be Home 
Greatness and I love how you described it all!
I suppose that it’s not surprising – giving that it is our largest organ – that the state of our skin is used as a metaphor for something deeper. So we are too thin skinned or too thick skinned. But tough skinned. I’d take that as a compliment. Spending a bit of time around 90 year olds I can tell you that old skin is fragile and breaks down if you so much as look at it. Your tough skin still has a lot of miles in it! Congrats on your piercing!
Woah! “Tough skin…”… it certainly should be! That “tough” belly skin is a testimony to the seven babes that grew and stretched, tumbled and kicked, and punched and scrunched inside of it. It is certainly them to shower thanks upon. But then again, after having those seven babes, you do have a great body. Yet I digress… Hope Jekyll is peaceful 🙂
(Hopefully this doesn’t, somehow, duplicate my comment again lol).
Cute tummy. Hope the piercing takes.