Jade Mixup

 

“Come on. It’s time to get up and get ready for school,” my mother shouted up the stairs. Usually, I would hug my pillow tight and wrap my blanket around my body like a cocoon but not this morning! I threw my pillow on the floor, flung my blanket on the bed and jumped up like a waffle popping out of a toaster.

For the past four weeks prior to today, I nagged my mother so much that she agreed to let me get my ears pierced at only ten years old. All the other girls I was friends with were doing it. My mother said she would allow my best friend’s older sister who is sixteen to use ice and a needle with thread to make the piercings. Four weeks had passed and today, my ears were ready for real earrings.

When I got up for school, I knew my mother brought a pair of earrings for me at work. After I finished getting ready for school, my mother put the earrings in my hands. They were beautiful! They were made of real jade with a little gold swirl in them. I felt so happy! I couldn’t wait to try them on when I got home from school.

School was finally finished for the day. I ran all the way home and flew through the front door. My mother wasn’t there. I saw the jade earrings on the living room chair, and they were all chewed up. Skippy, one of our dogs, had spied the earrings, thought they were a toy, and proceeded to chew them up.

All I could do was let out a long, loud scream. I threw myself on the floor and started crying so hard my lungs burned and my throat was on fire. I was inconsolable. My mother tried to hug me and give me a tissue, but I wouldn’t let her because I was so mad at her for not watching the earrings. I was having a meltdown!

My mother tried to console me by saying, “Stop crying or you’ll make yourself sick.” I thought, “It gets worse than this?” Then she said, “I’ll get you another pair of earrings, but it will take two weeks. If you can stop crying till then, you’ll be wearing them. We’ll buy Skippy a chew toy so he knows what he can and cannot chew up.”

Well, I started to feel better. I took the tissue and wiped my tears away. Two weeks seemed like a long time from now, but I knew I could do it if I counted one day at a time. In no time, the two weeks passed by, and my earrings looked beautiful in my ears. My mother was able to come through like she always did.

Ellen