This summer, my six-year-old daughter lost her left earring in her Gaga’s pool. We didn’t know it fell out until it was too late and the hole closed shut. She didn’t get a new piercing until last week because of Covid.

Full disclosure, I have no idea how to clean a pierced ear. I don’t have a sister or any female cousins, so earrings are a foreign object to me. As a teenager in the ’90’s, a lot of guys in my school got their ear pierced. I wasn’t one of them. Now, I get to clean my daughter’s ear piercing without any help twice a day.

My daughter was doing her virtual kindergarten work when I walked into her room with a cotton swab in one hand and a bottle of cleaner in the other.

“Let’s take a break so I can clean your ear,” I told her.

The look of fear on her face let me know she doesn’t trust my not so gentle bedside manner. After all, she continually tells me she is still traumatized by the way I quickly ripped off her band-aids when she was a little kid. Isn’t the saying, ‘rip off the band-aid’?

The first thing she noticed was I brought in the wrong ear cleaner. The one I had was the kind that burns her ear. She made sure I knew Mom uses the other kind that doesn’t hurt. Alrighty, then.

I grabbed the one Mom uses. My daughter was much happier. I poured some liquid on a cotton swab and dabbed around the earring. My daughter started to squirm away. Cleaning a ear piercing is so much easier when you also have to chase your daughter.

Next, I had to move the earring around. I took this to mean spinning the earring.

With the first spin, my daughter yelled, “Daddy, that hurts.”

“Sorry, not trying to hurt you,” I replied.

“Remember how you used to rip off my band-aids?” she asked. “Don’t do the same to my earring.” See what I mean, still traumatized.

The final turn and done. No tears were shed, so that’s a positive. Now I have a break until the next cleaning in a few hours. Let the countdown begin.