UNCLE BOB...TREND SETTER

I've never really thought of myself as a trend setter. But in 1982, I went out on a limb and did something so radical to my physical appearance that I was scorned and ridiculed by my peers and strangers alike.

I got my ear pierced.

Keep in mind, kiddies ... some of you don't even remember the days when if a guy had his ear pierced, he had to be gay. No ifs, ands or buts.

Well...PLENTY of butts. Just no "ifs" and "ands".

I was never gay. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay. I just never had the urge to sleep with someone who had the same type of plumbing that I had.

If I wanted to see a nice pecker, I didn't go hounding my buddies to whip out their dicks. I just pulled the waist band of my pants out, sneaked a peek at my own tallywhacker, and it was game over, man.

But...a pierced ear on a guy in 1982 ... that was cause for commotion on a college campus.

It was at the University of Tennessee, January 18,1982. Me and my buddies Bill and Thomas were sitting around my dorm room getting drunk and stoned. It was the eve of my 20th birthday and I decided I wanted to do something radical to end my teen years.

"Let's go to the mall and get our ears pierced," I slurred.

My buddies looked at me like I was Jeffrey Dahmer confessing his sexual fantasies.

"What?," I remember Bill saying. "Are you a fag?"

Nope. Just wasted.

I explained to the two of them that it would be something so mind-blowing that it would HAVE to get a reaction from everyone we knew. We KNEW we weren't gay, and personally, I didn't care if people thought I was anyway. I was 6'3", 220 lbs. and capable of successfully whipping ass when need be.

Labels never scared me.

We smoked a little more ganja and I finally convinced the two guys to accompany me to the mall, where I was going to pay five bucks to get my ear pierced at Spencer Gifts.

Since we were so trashed, we thought it best to call our two gal pals, Kat and Amanda to drive us to the mall.

....Plus...none of us had a car on campus and they did.

So the five of us pile into Kat's car and we make the five mile drive to the mall.

We get there and I'm BAKED. It's a miracle I was able to sit in the ear-piercing seat without sliding out.

The girl who pierced my ear was very wary of what was going on. She had NEVER pierced a guy's ear before and couldn't figure out why I wanted mine done.

Mainly because I wanted to shock people. At the time, only Rod Stewart and Steven Tyler had pierced ears that I knew of. It wasn't exactly a fashion statement in the hills of Tennessee.

The piercing itself didn't hurt. Apparently, drinking massive amounts of alcohol and smoking plenty of bud numbed the pain.

I sat there grinning with this new gold stud in my ear and asked the guys what they thought.

They grinned and decided to do it too.

Thomas ... heh...he was scared to death of the pain. He was a big black guy with this afro that was left over from the 70s. He looked like a Black Panther, but once he got in that chair, he was squirming like an orgasmic woman.

As the woman put the gun up to his ear, he jerked his head and the earring landed on the edge of his ear. He got pierced, but it was so off center on his ear, he looked like an idiot, which made me roar with laughter.

The three of us walked out of Spencer's and immediately stepped into Coolville.

People stared at us like we were rock stars wandering through the mall. All three of us with these chintzy little five dollar studs on our ears acting like we were hot shit.

We stepped outside the mall and an ice storm was underway.

We began the drive back to campus, but the roads were iced over pretty bad and we eventually skidded off the road. Nobody was hurt, but we weren't all going to sit in the car and freeze to death, so we got out of the car and began trying to walk to Daryll's (the restaurant) which was on top of a very steep hill.

Once there, we stepped inside where everyone else had been trapped due to the ice.

We were stared at the entire time. People in the restaurant were scared to death of us. We were either psychos or drugged out rock stars who had come to crash the party.

Neither.

We were just drunken college students who had made the best move of their lives.

Because now...women noticed us.

A LOT of women noticed us.

I went from dud to stud with just one earring. I remember distinctly, the three of us sitting at a table in the school cafeteria and within minutes, the table was full of good-looking women wanting to talk about how cool our earrings were.

Did I get dates from the earring??

As the Kool Aid Man would say "Ohhhh yeahhhhhh."

The coolest thing was...I was constantly approached by girls who had lost an earring and would give me the earring they had left for my ear.

My favorite earrings were a diamond one, a large silver hoop and a fossil.

Yep, a fossil.

It looked like I had a bone hanging from my ear. At the time my hair was long and cut in a shag...think David Cassidy on steroids.

Wearing a bone that touched your shoulder ... well...my ass got noticed quite a bit.

...Not necessarily my ass...my ear got noticed. I'm sure my ass was checked out too ... but it was most likely done behind my back.

Within months, guys around campus realized that if they wanted to get tons of attention from good looking women, they should pierce their ears. And they did.

The trend started growing. By 1984, it was beginning to be a common sight...men with pierced ears.

These days, if a guy has a pierced ear, it's not even noticed.

But at one time...yer ol' Uncle Bob was the cat's meow.

The trend setter.

The guy who bucked the system and let it pay off for him.

The guy...the guy...the guy....

Well...the guy who chicks swooned over.

All because I had five bucks and some alcohol and drug-induced courage.

I kept the pierced ear until 1986 when I met my wife. It was still a novelty in 1986 and I used the fact that my ear was pierced in my comedy act to some extent.

I wish I could remember pieces of the routine today.

God knows this entry coulda been funnier.

Heh.