Our reality: go to the mall, pick out some earrings, get her ears pierced and go home after spending 20 minutes on the floor of the store.
You see, everything went fine up to the piercing. In fact, the piercing went fine. Ana was a trooper and got her left ear pierced first, followed by her right. She looked at her newly pierced ears in the mirror. She received instructions for after-piercing ear care. She got up out of the chair and listened to the sales lady tell us what specials were available in the store that day because Ana got her ears pierced.
That's when I heard a tremendous BANG, spun around in alarm, and saw my daughter passed out on the floor.
And since she was unconscious before she hit, poor Analee's chin bore the brunt of the fall. She came to pretty quickly and asked what had happened. I told her she had passed out. We moved her to the front corner of the store to lie down for a while. One employee brought us a little decorative pillow (on clearance, no less!) for Ana to rest her head on. She got us a sucker to help her blood sugar, then ran around the corner to Subway for a cup of water. Another employee came over and held her legs up (her face was extremely pale) and sweetly talked to us for a while.
Ana complained that her chin hurt. She had floor burned it pretty well, and it was bleeding a little bit. We dressed it with a leftover Mickey Mouse Band-aid (from our trip to California last October) and hung out for a while. When she was finally ready to sit and then stand, we took it slow and easy.
We still had to pay for the earrings and the piercings, so we did that (with my arm protectively placed around her shoulder) and came home. A few ibuprofen and an ice pack later, Analee started feeling better.
She and I followed up with the rest of our date later that week (Orange Leaf on Wednesday evening), her chin has been healing nicely (except when she banged it on the living room floor showing us how well she does "the worm"), her newly pierced ears look dazzling, and she has a memorable story to tell about the time when she got her ears pierced.
Analee with her healing chin and sparkly ears.