When I look back on my life, however short, there is a constant fixture, a desperate longing for something I could never have: pierced ears. Like many children in my situation, the obstacle was not my age, an allergy, or even hemophilia. It was my mother.

From an early age, I can remember my mother regaling me with tales of my teenage aunt and grandmother getting infections after their ear piercings. Something, she assured me, I’d never have to worry about, because I was never piercing my ears. “Prevention is the best treatment!” I recall thinking sourly that the whole episode was moot, because it had occurred back in the days when people rode horses on dirt roads to school, so piercing technology had surely improved.

I was able to cope with the lack of earrings for most of my life, waiting patiently as the years flew by, my friends going out to get piercings one by one. Finally, when I was thirteen, four of my friends returned to school wearing glittering studs within a two month period, and I realized I was the only girl in my grade who wanted earrings, but didn’t have them. It seemed as if everyone had their ears pierced, and often more, like the waitress with three nose rings who handed me a drink, or my English teacher who returned from vacation with a shiny stud in his tongue. “Don’t you love the click-clack sound when I read Emily Dickinson? It stresses the cadence!” After deciding that my mom was simply being unreasonable, I resolved to convince her of that fact. But how?

Every parent, no matter how stubborn, has chinks in his or her armor. For example, my mom has always been amazed by PowerPoint Presentations, her technologically illiterate mind wowed by the bouncing bullet points and transition animations, not realizing that both take minimal effort. Now that I had a vehicle for my argument, I just needed convincing evidence. For this, I turned to my friends, all of whom once had been in the same situation. Their advice, while amusing, was not very helpful, tailored to their own parents’ susceptibilities.

“Just beg,” said Lily. “If you do it for long enough, she’ll have to say yes.”

“Begging just annoys her,” I replied, shaking my head. It was true, in a battle of wills, my mother’s conviction was only strengthened by irritation.

“Try bargaining,” suggested Katherine. “Ask her if you can get them pierced if you do something good.”

“I already tried that,” I said dejectedly. A few years earlier, I had asked if we could get a dog. Smiling, my mom had replied that when I became a Rhodes scholar, she would buy me any breed I liked.

“Just do what I did,” said Marusya. “I wore clip-on earrings, then pressed them into my ears really hard so there would be a red mark when I took them off, then went in crying to my parents about the pain.”

“Why didn’t they just tell you not to wear earrings?” I asked.

“That was the clever part.” Marusya leaned in and grinned slyly. “I just cried to my parents that all of my friends were dumping me because I didn’t have pierced ears like them. My dad responds super well to that.”

“I doubt that will work,” I said. I could imagine exactly what my mother would say, “Adolescence is a time of self-definition! You should be glad I’m not letting you pierce your ears, so you can find yourself instead of being a conformist.” “She’s a doctor,” I said. “I think it should be something more logical.”

“Mia,” said Sahdri, who had had her ears pierced at a very young age for cultural reasons, “just let me talk to her. I can convince her. I’ll just use the rite of passage argument. I was in debate last year; this will be a piece of cake.” She flipped her hair in a self-assured manner.

“Sahdri,” I said. “You couldn’t even convince your own mother to let you come to my birthday party. What makes you think you can convince mine on something she is more averse to than getting me a phone? Besides,” I finished, smiling, “I went to debate camp this summer.”

Concluding that all of my friends’ advice would be ineffective, I decided upon a more evidence-based route. My mother prides herself on being analytical. This was her weakness! I checked various parenting websites, all discussing the controversial subject of ear piercing. However, I abandoned this approach after I read the first entry, which suggested that girls should get their ears pierced during their first menstrual cycle. I cringed as my mother’s hypothetical words echoed in my ears. “What is this, some atavistic ritual you perform before chanting to the Sun God and sacrificing a lamb?”

I was all but at a loss for ideas, when I decided to interview other parents whose children had piercings, so I could record their adult opinions and relate them to my mother. After all, who understands parents better than parents? Finally, I hit pay dirt – arguments I felt sure would sway even my righteously obstinate mother.

After spending several more days of compiling my information like a soldier stocking up for battle, I finished my PowerPoint and decided to take it for a test run with my father.

“It’s good,” he said when I finished, nodding slightly.

“Good enough to convince Mommy?” I asked anxiously.

“Take your best shot, kid,” he said, patting me on the back. “Good luck.” With that, clearly not wanting to be embroiled in the impending mother-daughter conflict, he strode out of my room before I could pressure him into declaring his allegiance to me.

At 8:37 pm, my eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Clearing my throat, I whipped out my laptop, placing it in front of my mom. “I have a short presentation to show you…”

My words slowly trailed off as I watched my mother’s eyes begin to twitch, glued to the words on the screen, “Ear Piercing for Children.” Immediately after, she tensed in her seat, rolling her eyes. That look was a sure indicator of anger. The last time I had seen it was when I had plopped a plastic baggie of plankton from an oceanography trip down in the fridge next to the lettuce.

A wave of adrenaline rushing through my body, I grabbed my laptop and fled to the piano room, where I slammed the door behind me, thrust myself onto the bench, grabbed my clarinet, and began to play Stamitz’s Clarinet Concerto as fast and loudly as I could, as if the intensity of the notes could drive my mother away, so she would not come in and dismiss my suggestion immediately. As long as she did not actually say that it was never happening, there was still hope. Going up to bed later, I kicked myself mentally for not realizing that timing was everything, recalling instances when I had avoided a lecture on a bad grade by first discussing how we had learned about cyber bullying that day.

Two days later, after fortifying my arguments based on some discreet questions I asked my mom in the car, I grabbed my laptop and sat on the couch, planning to show my mom the PowerPoint after we watched a movie. Unfortunately, the movie we chose was “Shutter Island.” So that images of bleeding people and crazy murderers were not dancing in my mother’s head after its completion, I requested we tell some scientific puns first. “I finally got rid of that nasty electrical charge I’ve been carrying. I’m ex-static!”

“So,” said my mom after the jokes had finished. “Are you going to give me your spiel or what?”

“Ok,” I said, swallowing hard.

In the first slide, I outlined her objections: my young age and her own weird, irrational issues. I’d been told it was always smart to summarize your points before you made them. Watching my mother’s impassive face though, I wasn’t sure. I could swear that her thin smile loosened a little, like a wax sculpture beginning to melt.

“Piercing technology has improved,” I declared while showing Slide 2. Of course it had. It’s not like we were in the Stone Age of the late ‘70s anymore. They didn’t even have twitter then.

Next, I moved to my most persuasive evidence, testimonials from other parents who were fine with piercing, or as my mother would probably refer to it, mutilation. Mrs. Ichanov described how she had pierced her own ears with a needle and an ice cube in a dingy, Russian ghetto, yet still was uninfected. I could almost feel my mother cringe at all the theoretical bacteria, invading my bloodstream and instigating a cascade of inflammatory responses.

For the other parental slide, I showed a picture of Mr. Tuan, Katherine’s dad, along with a quote of his. “For me, it’s like a colorful, floppy hat. Who cares? Just something girls wear.” My mom’s eyebrow arched slightly. Suppressing a grin, I celebrated silently. I was just glad she didn’t know that Mr. Tuan’s eldest daughter was an Asian Rastafarian, dreadlocks stuffed into this oversized hat, who used her Princeton English degree to compose reggae lyrics.

To finish, I exploited my mother’s weakness. “As a woman of science, I would expect that you would be rational,” I said, “instead of holding on to issues about needles and your children. This irrational decision of ‘I just don’t want you to do it’ is not a good model for me in the future,” I continued. “Making decisions based on an unfounded, emotional instinct instead of facts is generally a bad idea.” In the slide was a concealed threat that if she lived her life based on illogical tenets, I would end up believing in reincarnation, or worse, pursuing a career in the humanities.

“I understand that you don’t like piercing,” I said, “but I’m not asking you to get your ears pierced. This is something that I want badly that would not affect you directly, unlike a phone, where you have to pay the bills and deal with how much I would use it. If necessary, I would pay for this as well. This isn’t like clothing either, where there is the question of being obscene. This only affects me, but you dictate whether or not I can do it.” This argument was actually a tweaked version of one I had given in debate camp when arguing in favor of cannibalism. “People eating other people in private, behind closed doors, doesn’t affect the naysayers directly,” I had said. “So they have no right to ban it just because they get a little queasy thinking about it.” I had been victorious in that particular debate, something I hoped augured well for my presentation.

“I’ll give you time to think this over,” I said, trying my best to relax my face into an expression of patience and maturity. As I had said earlier to Lily, begging and nagging were some of my mother’s pet peeves. One whiney comment and she would immediately dismiss the idea altogether.

The look on my mother’s face told me the outcome was dubious. Without planning to, I made one final comment to my mom before leaving. “Look,” I said. “I’ve been talking about how, since this is my body, it should be my decision, but we both know it’s really your decision. Not Daddy’s, not mine, yours.”

My dad rolled his eyes.

“Even if you say no,” I continued, “I won’t whine or complain or say that you’re being unfair. I’ll disagree with you, but I’ll respect your decision.” On that note, I ran up to bed.

“I have absolutely no idea of the outcome,” my dad said when he came in to say goodnight fifteen minutes later before I could grill him for information.

“That’s because you had no say in the decision, right?” I called to his retreating back.

“Go to bed, kid.”

The next morning, I was eating a bagel smothered in cream cheese when my mother came in. “Yes,” she said simply.

“Huh?” I said through a mouth full of food.

“You can get your ears pierced,” she said.

Swallowing shakily, I stared at her for a few seconds, then my face lit up. “Really?! Thank you so much! What swayed you? Which slide?”

She shrugged. “Not one in particular. You made a logical, coherent argument.” She paused. “Actually, what really convinced me was your speech at the end.”

“Really?” I asked.

“You were extremely respectful, even in the face of my possible rejection,” she said. “A mature child, and I appreciate that.” The corners of her mouth turned up a little, and her eyes sparkled like freshly cut gems. “You still turn to me for advice.”

At Claire’s later that day, the piercing lady rigorously scrubbed both my ears and the countertop under my mother’s watchful eye, using enough sanitizing wipes and latex gloves to create her personal landfill. “You have such wonderful earlobes for earrings,” she said, smiling thinly. Someone really had to inform her that ear-piercing was a no-tip business.

“When she was born,” my mom said proudly, “the nurse in the delivery room told me that exact same thing.”

Beside her, my teenage cousin, who had been buying supplies for college, and my aunt, who has no daughters, looked on. According to Aunt Ruth, both she and my mom wanted to witness all the important turning points in their children’s lives.

“How’s this?” the woman asked, drawing a little dot on both of my ears.

“Maybe a little to the left,” my mom said, then smiled warmly at me. “I want it to be perfect.”

“Say cheese!” my aunt cheered, lifting a camera to take a picture of the piercing gun at my ears.

“Thanks for taking that, Ruth,” my mother said to my aunt as the needle punctured my lobe.

I suppose that the slide show didn’t matter in the end. Or rather, the content of the slides wasn’t what convinced her. Throughout my life, my mother has been a guiding force, with a gentle yet firm grip, a mother bear steering me in the right direction. I remember the sweet days of innocence and preschool, when my mom had spent hours teaching me how to ride a bike. “It’s all about courage,” she had said. “You’ll feel more comfortable going slowly, but you’ll always fall down that way. You need to build up the courage to bike fast.” There comes a time in every parent’s life when it’s time to let the little baby crawl off on its own, finding its own way. My mother hadn’t completely let me go, but my PowerPoint had made her realize that it was time to loosen her grasp a little.

“Oh, look at you,” she said, her eyes tearing up as she gazed at the glittering, periwinkle studs in my ears.

Suddenly, I remembered that on my first day of kindergarten, I had seen my mother’s eyes glistening as she let my hand go in Ms. McMahon’s class. Assuming it was allergies, I had thought nothing of it, but now… There was another time, when I had gone on a two-day trip to Disneyland with my choir. It hadn’t been a big deal for me to leave home, but my mom continued to wave at me from the curb until I could no longer see her. Maybe she had still been waving, even after the bus turned out of the parking lot.

“You’re growing up,” my mom murmured.

I guess we both are.