As You Can See From My Tongue Piercing, I Am Quite The Individual
By: Amanda Sanders

Call it an inborn instinct to not be content to merely blend in or whatever, but I've always been a bit of an oddball. Unlike the rest of the world, who mindlessly grind through life like gears in a machine until they wear out and retire to Florida or die in some god foresaken sewer someplace, I'm intent on forcing the conventions of society to conform to MY will, NOT vice versa, which is why I decided to get my tongue pierced a month ago.

Of course, most people don't understand why I'd put a metal barbell through my tongue, but I wouldn't expect them to. Their hive-like minds won't allow them to comprehend any behavior that deviates from what they've been indoctrinated to view as "normal" or "rational", and so, as is common to all clones, they respond with revulsion at the thing their brainwashed subconsciouses label as a threat to the herd. I can see it in the glaze of their hypnotized eyes when they hear me clicking my piercing against my teeth during the college marketing class I'm taking, or when I take their orders at the Outback Steakhouse where I work. Sometimes they say something idiotic like, "Didn't that hurt?" and I just want to scream in their stupid faces, "Yes it hurt for a little while, but it's better than the perpetual agony of living the life of a sheep like you!" But I don't, because I'd probably get fired.

Really though, I don't really care what people think, whether they like my tongue piercing or not. As if I actually want a bunch of Honda Civic driving, Da Vinci Code reading tools get what I do anyway. Please. If the kind of person who'd prefer to watch American Idol over Veronica Mars during the same time slot suddenly approves of my lifestyle choices, then I know I must be making the wrong ones. Seriously, if Howie Mandel offered me a million dollars to take my toungue piercing out and start spending my time watching his lame show, I'd say "no deal", because my piercing is a reflection of who I am - a person who, for starters, possesses the brains and taste to prefer the reruns of "Sex and the City" on TBS over the rest of the garbage polluting the airwaves at 8 o'clock Monday nights.

I'm telling you, now that I've expressed my individuality, I know there's no going back. Never again will I return to the mass of glassy-eyed lemmings stumbling towards the precipice of oblivion. In fact, I was just contemplating the uniquely intricate complexity of my soul, and whether it would be more accurately reflected by my getting my nipples or clit pierced the next time I have an extra hundred dollars saved up. Or maybe I'll get a tattoo of a tribal sun or something Celtic in the small of my back. Now that's an idea...