It was a bizarre situation that I never thought about being in and it all started because of my love for my bling. And to make things worse, there were no words I could think of to get out of it.

I tried to wait when I received the call of nature, but I couldn’t. I was attending a writer’s conference at the Blue Ridge Conference Center. Hopefully, the bathroom would be nice and clean.

Growing up, I learned a valuable lesson from my momma: the first thing you always do in a public restroom is line the seat with toilet paper. As I was bent over and applying the lining, I heard the loud clink of metal hitting porcelain. I reached up and felt my earlobes. The earring in my right one was gone! If it was floating in the toilet bowl, I would have to reach in with my bare hand to retrieve it from the germy cesspool.

Oh, the horror!

I know many women who would have simply flushed the toilet and not thought a thing about losing their earring. Not me. Those earrings were a brand new pair of silver French hook earrings that I had worn to the Awards Banquet the previous evening. That’s when I received my certificate of achievement for my book “Deadly Doll” being a Selah finalist in the debut novel category. The earrings were now souvenirs to me.

I covered my eyes with my left hand and peeked between my fingers to look into to the toilet bowl . No earring. “While that was good, it almost meant that my earring was lying somewhere on that nasty bathroom floor.

I looked around the bowl. Nothing. Next, I bent down and peered into the stall to my right. There I saw a pair of feet wearing pink leather sandals with sparkly stones on the top. The lady’s feet were well-manicured with pink nail polish matching her sandals. And there, lying next to her foot, was my precious earring!

What in the world was I going to do? My gut instinct was to reach under the stall wall and grab it. I had very quick reflexes. Maybe she wouldn’t notice my hand at all. But my momma raised me to have southern etiquette. Sticking your hand in somebody else’s bathroom stall isn’t very polite.

Maybe I could ask the pink sandaled lady to help me. I thought about saying, “Excuse me, but would you mind scooting the earring over that’s next to your foot?”

That just wouldn’t do at all. First, it sounded awkward. Second, what if she decided to hand it to me after she got finished? Like I would want to touch my earring after that?
I thought about saying, “Don’t worry about getting done. Just go ahead and scoot it over please.” That sounded worse than the other one.

Maybe I could reach under and over to get it and say, “Don’t panic! I’m only after the earring.” Wouldn’t that be great for everybody else in the restroom to hear?

That’s when I then realized there were no polite or gentle words I could use to ask for her help. My only polite and non-embarrassing option was to retrieve my earring after she left the stall.

I crossed my arms and tapped my fingers as I stared at her pink toe-nailed feet. What was taking her so long? Wait a minute. What if she stepped on my earring on her way out? That may bend it or worse, break it. Nope. There was no way was I going to leave the fate of my earring up to chance.

Sometimes a woman's gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.

“Lord, be with me,” I prayed in my head as I squatted down.

At lightning speed, I reached over, snatched up the earring, and clutched it to my chest, I stood up and waited for her reaction. She didn’t do anything. In a few seconds she left the stall. I wondered if she had been waiting for me to retrieve my earring while I was pondering what to do.

Now that my earring was contaminated, I couldn’t put it back in my ear, so I crammed it down in my right jean pocket. There was no way I could just wear the one earring. So, I took the left one out and shoved it into my left pocket to keep it quarantined from the contaminated one.

I continued to stand in my stall a few minutes after the pink sandaled lady left hers. I didn’t want to come face to face with her after my horrible breach of bathroom etiquette. Finally, I stepped out into a bathroom lobby full of women. I scanned all the feet around me and I didn’t see the pink pair of sandals.

Once I sat back down at the breakfast table, I relayed my earring ordeal to my friends and how disappointed I was that I couldn’t wear my earrings now.

My friend sweet Shelley reached into her big grandma purse and pulled out a couple of alcohol swabs. “Brooke, you can clean it with these. That way you can be wearing them.”
Being the germaphobe that I am, I said, “Thank you, but no thanks.”

By the look in Shelley’s eyes, I could tell it hurt her feelings. To soften the blow, I said, “I just don’t think that’s enough to clean nasty bathroom germs off of it.”

My other friend Leigh Ann, who is more like me, said, “Wow Brooke, why don’t you use some boric acid to clean it.”

I answered, “I’ll just wait until I get home and use Tim’s blow torch on it.”

No, I didn’t use Tim’s blowtorch. I soaked my earrings in both rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Then I put antibiotic salve on them before I wore it them again.

Sometimes you just gotta pray and reach for the earring.

“Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 (KJV)