So my daughter got her nose pierced

This is not my daughter, but it has a great nose.

Yes, that would be the one with the doctorate. I got one of those "Guess what?" calls over the holidays, the kind that every parent receives with some amount of trepidation. "I got something pierced today."

I knew the ears had long been done, but the other possibilities made me downright queasy. "It wasn't your tongue, was it?" I asked. She was speaking too clearly for that, but one never knows. I started running down the list and it turned out to be the nose.

I generally try to be supportive but the best thing I could come up with was the observation that I would feel fully justified using force to prevent someone from doing the same to me.

"You remember that you do karate, right?" I asked. "You get hit there."

She was undeterred by this possibility, possibly because she usually dishes out more punishment than she receives when sparring.

I talked to my son in law about this. "She just likes to express herself," he said. I guess this is what happens when one grows up listening to Madonna.

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