Today, I went to get my nose repierced. I got it done last May, had to take it out in December, and missed it. So I trotted over to the only piercer in town, down on South Street and weirdly named Angels.
The kid who did it was the usual pierced-everywhere-forked-tongue freak. But he was a nice guy. Except he seemed to have a slight prejudice.
I took my flatmate, Sarah, with me, who is from DC but went to Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. The piercer asked her where she went to uni and she told him.
“Oh. Ohio. You shouldn’t be allowed in here,” he said darkly. And then shaking himself he said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well,” she tried to explain, “I’m not actually from Ohio. I just lived there.”
“Still…. No, it’s a long story. No one from Ohio is allowed in the store.” He declined to say more and the piercing was done then, with, ahem, some pain. After the discussion we were left feeling rather awkward about the whole experience. I forked over my money and we left to go get drinks.
Over wine, we discussed what possible prejudice people from Ohio could have inspired. We came up with the following scenarios:
- Buckeye massacre of some kind with peanut butter everywhere. And I mean everywhere.
- He had taken an ill-advised trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was bitter about the experience of having to pay $20 to, you know, be in a big building in Cleveland.
- His whole family was killed in a freak roller coaster accident at Cedar Point.
- The Erie Baby ate his first love on above ill-advised trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he’d be stuck on 14 year olds for the rest of his life a la Humbert Humbert.
- Co-workers nearly bored to death by tourists from Ohio.
That was all we could come up. I wonder which it was.