Tragic tragus.

This is a story in which I mutilate my ear. Last fall, I decided to get my right tragus pierced to commemorate my 50 mile race. (For those of you too lazy to google it, that’s the little bump of cartilage in front of your ear—the part that holds your earbuds in place.) Not that there’s any particular connection between running for half a day and sticking a pin through part of your head, but it was a look I liked and a seemingly reasonable reward to myself for surviving a physical challenge. I was excited to have a new piercing, and hopped in the chair at a nice joint in Chicago, in late September, about a week after the race. Pretty much immediately, I proceeded to make a series of bad choices—repeatedly putting on and pulling off a motorcycle helmet, sleeping on that side of my head, skipping a few daily saline soaks—all of which irritated the piercing until it got so enflamed that I had to have it removed by another piercer about 5 weeks later. Fail. My cartilage forgave me, however, and promptly resumed something like its original shape. Flash to the end of January, when I found myself in a piercing shop with a friend. She has had hers pierced for years, and it looks great, so I was inspired to ask the piercer if he thought there was any reason not to repierce mine. He took a look, proclaimed me fit, and I happily paid him to jam another needle through there. After which, I followed all the rules. I soaked it, I slept only on my left, and still, I ended up with icky angry red bumps. Now there may be a version of this story where I stick it out another week and the saline magically cures me, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. I pulled the plug tonight on the whole project. Took out the barbell and said a prayer: that my ear won’t stay red and bumpy forever, because Bieber hair is really not going to work for me.