Here's are a couple photos to show what my ears looked like about 8 or 9 years ago:



As a teenager, I was quickly addicted to piercings and dyed hair and clothes that the majority wasn't wearing. It's fun to be different and I wanted to be even more different than the different kids. My normal style was something like this:

* Face and ears all pierced up.
* Insane hair color all messed up with gel, mousse, tar, etc..
* Preppy-kid clothing or gothic nerd depending on the day.

I'm not sure what drew me toward stretching my ears out. There weren't many people doing that sort of thing in my school. I think I knew of maybe one kid whose ears were gauged. But for some reason I was extremely interested in it. I had seen that sort of thing on Ubangi tribesman on public access and I thought to myself, I can do that.

And I did. I had already pierced my own ears and then I started stretching them out. Be it for style or individuality I'm not really sure. I just did it. And I kept doing it until they got bigger and bigger. By the time I was to be married my ears we're stretched to the point of requiring a 1/2" diameter ring in each ear.

For wedding purposes, I put in some flesh colored plugs that made it look as if my ears weren't even pierced. Check em' out:



You can hardy even tell they're there. Exhibit B:



For whatever reason, I opted to take my big fat earrings out during our honeymoon. That was 5 1/2 years ago. During that time my ears shrunk down in a major way. You could still tell that they were pierced, but that was about it. Until recently.

Recently, I've had the itch to re-stretch my ears. Do you know why?

Yeah...me neither. I'm not really sure what it is, but I really feel like this is something that's a part of me. And I realize that could sound dweebish something terrible. This feels more like who I am. Over the last few weeks I've been gauging them back out again. It's much easier this time actually. My ears are floozies. I'm almost back to 1/2" and I think I'll probably stop around 5/8". Here's what they look like today:



So here's to doing something that you don't fully understand. One thing is for sure though. It's already started up some cool conversations.