The Earring
I left teaching and became an actuarial student in 1987 (same year our son was born). I desired to move into a management position, and within three years, I had been promoted into one and had people reporting to me. A couple of them were new hires.
One of those new hires was a man named Chris. Chris was a recent college graduate that wanted to become an actuarial student and take exams. He was a smart guy (and a little green), but his most interesting trait was that he liked a good joke. Again, this is 1988 or 1989. Things were a bit different than today.
At that time, male actuarial students were expected to wear dress pants, button up shirt and a tie (a suit coat wasn’t required). As an actuarial student and a professional expert, you were expected to dress and act in a more middle management manner. To give you an example, I was studying at my desk for an actuarial exam. The chapter of the advanced statistics book the exam would be on, used the whole chapter to do one problem. To study, I followed the book’s process, page by page, with a goal of producing the printed step results. I was matching exactly until the very end of the chapter. I came up with a 0.7 and the book printed the answer as -0.3 (for this problem, correlation coefficients, that difference was significant).
I redid all the steps several times and eventually figured out that the book’s author had used a rounded previous step (where I used all the digits in my calculator) and that made the difference at the end. I was ticked! I tossed the book and people saw the book flying. My boss called me into his office, shut the door and explained that while he understood why I got upset and tossed the book, people outside our area didn’t and it wasn’t professional behavior.
But back to Chris. One day, he came in with a diamond stud in one ear (left, I believe). After a couple hours, people got brave enough to ask him about it since surely it wouldn’t be considered professional (if you are young and are hoping to be hired by an older person closer to my age, you might want to consider this). That’s when he started, slowly, showing people that the stud earring had a magnetic back and his ear wasn’t pierced. All of the actuarial students (myself included), briefly thought about each getting such a magnetic backed earring but worried that we’d hurt our career and abandoned the plan.
I’ve spent the last several days in a setting where most of the people I’ve been exposed to are in their mid-twenties. I had expected to see a lot of tattoos…I haven’t. But what I’ve seen a lot of are nose and facial piercings - studs, rings, even things that look like what is put in a cow’s nose.
“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.” - 1 Timothy 2:1-11 ESV
You’d wonder whether I looked down on all the young people with piercing on their face in multiple places. If you thought that, you’d be wrong. However, it’s all I can do to not stare at them - how do you clean them, can you sneeze around them, do they ever get caught in your sleeve or when you pull on a shirt, did you get them before or after you hired into this important role, etc? Unfortunately, these questions diverted some of my attention from the task at hand (of which I was the subject participant). That’s how I interpret part of the passage above. Adorning oneself is okay until it becomes so much of a focus that it distracts your attention away from worshipping God.
I’m sure every one of these young people have, by now, forgotten their facial adornment like I don’t think of wearing my wedding ring on my finger. Society seems to be moving in the direction of accepting such facial adornment (compared to almost 40 years ago) so over time everyone else won’t be distracted by it (again, the same as me wearing my wedding band) but for now, I hope young people consider and understand that old folk (like me) are distracted by this adornment.
