"Spiedies for the Spirit" are inspirational, motivational and/or humorous stories about Binghamton University that Donna Lazarus '03 is collecting from alumni, students, faculty and staff. They have also become an occasional feature in Alumni Connect. The following story is a recent submission Lazarus received.

Pierced
by Jess Segal '01

"Mom? Here, hang on a second. There's someone who wants to talk to you." I handed the phone to the clerk.

"Mrs.?"

"Segal."

"Hi, Mrs. Segal. Hi, no, you don't know me. No, I'm a salesclerk at Penney's. At the Oakdale Mall in Binghamton. No, your daughter wasn't shoplifting. Does she do that? No, I just I told her that I liked her nose ring and before I knew it, she had out this cell phone and she was all like, hey tell my mom, tell her how much you like my nose ring. So hi."

I grabbed back the phone.

"Mother. See, people like my nose ring. I am not a social outcast. No, sending me away to college was a good thing. See, I can think for myself. Look, I have to go. Why? Because I have to give the clerk money."

Click.

Stop. Rewind two months. It was my 21st birthday, and my boyfriend had taken out another girl, a friend of his who had been accepted to NYU.

"Honey," he said, "you'll have other birthdays, but you only get accepted to grad school once."

Not if you apply to more than one school.

Determined not to spend what should be the penultimate moment of my senior year sulking alone, and not really eager to make the mandatory birthday trek to The Sports Bar and The Rat, I picked up the receiver and dialed the first piercing place with a Binghamton address.

"Hey, when do you close? Midnight? Thanks."

Acacia, my faithless roommate, screamed, "You want to do what?"

"You heard me."

"In Binghamton?"

As I sat in the back of the piercing shop with a _mocha from Java Joe's in hand, I saw the needle was longer than one of Prof. Shefftz's senior seminars. "Now, this won't hurt at all," said my new tattooed friend. "It's just like swimming in the Susquehanna in February."

Didn't someone drown there last year?

It was over in seconds.

"You look awesome!" Acacia proclaimed. "Now, what are you going to tell your parents?"

That they sent me to college to learn how to think for myself and that they should trust my ability to make my own decisions. In other words, I was going to do what all of my brilliant fiction professors had taught me well.

"I'm going to lie."

But I'm not going to lie now -- the giant hoop through my face was not exactly the gorgeous fashion statement I'd hoped it would be. And on top of that, I was a little worried about it getting knocked out of my face during a scuffle at the Student Association.

When my parents saw my nose ring for the first time, my father screamed that I was no longer his child.

He was partly right: I was no longer a child. I also wasn't just "the English major chick with the entertainment magazine" anymore. Now, I was "the pierced English major chick with the entertainment magazine." Suddenly, purple-haired freshmen and goth sophomores wanted to buy me beer at Cheers. And when I walked into creative writing classes not cloaked in the requisite black, no one questioned my presence.

Though I had graduated from high school and the world of adolescent cliques almost four years earlier, my years at Binghamton University seemed, at times, a mere extension of that experience, not an introduction to adulthood. Cliques at college weren't composed of cheerleaders and geeks, but of sorority sisters and newspaper editors. Students were no longer grouped by table in the cafeteria; instead, they were separated into entire dining halls of their own. The lines between these groups weren't as strict as lines in high school, but they were drawn nonetheless. Hinman had the conservative, political kids; College-in-the-Woods was for the wannabe hippies. If you were looking to go Greek, Newing was for you; if you were quiet and artsy, Dickinson had a room with your name on the door.

In high school, cliques can make you or break you. Hurtful words thrown around at an editorial meeting can make you question your self-worth. However, in college, you decide for yourself what matters. Piercing my nose surprised my fellow English majors and Hinman buddies; it impressed strangers and CIW alums. Did it change who I was? Not really. My professors and activities did that. Did it give me more confidence? No, that was what I had roommates and friends for. Did it influence my future? Nope. Three months after graduating from Binghamton, I enlisted in AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps and was required to take the ring out. I obliged.

My time at Binghamton was lived to the fullest. While there, I pierced my nose. I also learned how to throw myself down a hill on a tray (ahem, sled legally down a slope), how to navigate a traffic circle (cross your eyes and gun it), and how to drink an entire pot of coffee black. I discovered, when running in the fall "Dorm Wars" scavenger hunt, just how far Newman House is from Hillside. Years of working for campus publications taught me that newspapers -- like boyfriends -- can lie. And early one summer morning, I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I would never actually see the legendary salamanders race across the road by the Nature Preserve.

I have no regrets.

Contributors wanted!

Lazarus invites alumni to dig deep into memories of life at Binghamton and write a short story about your most meaningful and profound memory. "I believe there are a wealth of stories that could warm the hearts of past, present and future members of the Binghamton community," said Lazarus. "My goal is to organize those amazing tales into a book."

Your story may be up to 1,200 words and should be submitted to the alumni office at alumni@binghamton.edu or Alumni and Parent Relations, Binghamton University, PO Box 6004, Binghamton, New York 13902-6004. Please include your name, year of graduation, phone number and e-mail address. Lazarus will contact you if your story is selected for publishing. We look forward to receiving your story!