How you envy parents who were Girl Guides or Boy scouts. They have had drilled into them the two words that are the key to painless parenting, "BE PREPARED". Despite trying and trying to "do your best" you had hopelessly failed "Reef Knots 101", and had been drummed out of "Badger Pack" inside a week. So today when you arrived back from exercising Ralph, the family wonder dog you were totally unprepared for the sight of your 15 year old daughter sporting a nose ring.

This is the child that went blue in the face and screamed bloody murder at the Infant Welfare Centre when a needle was produced for her triple antigen shots. The same Kate who would have risked gangrene and the amputation of her arm rather than let you remove a splinter from her finger with a sterilised sewing needle.

Not bothering simply to have her ears pricked, she has leapt headlong into the world of body piercing with a nose ring. Something has happened to your child. Maturity? Hardly. A lowered pain threshhold? Improbable. No, she has satisfied two imperatives which, outside the supple mind of a 15 year old, appear to be totally contradictory. It is patiently and patronisingly explained to you that the sterling silver ring dangling from her red and swollen nostril is essential for the expression of her individuality. Then, without the need to take pause for a breath of logic, you are told that "everybody else is getting it done".

You have seen these "everybody elses". Jason, Tyson, Danny and Reece, "cool" or "hot", "dudes" or "guys", (you have lost track of youth patois) whom your daughter seems to hold in awe, each sport a terrifying assortment of heavy metal embellishment.

Jason is so festooned with rings, knobs and slivers of silver that the slightest movement of his head sets off an echoing cymballic clatter. This mere 16 year old shares with veteran jackhammer operators all the symptoms of irreversible industrial deafness.

Less endowed in the ear department, Tyson sports two barbells in his upper and lower lips that punctuates his speech with the clicking sounds normally associated withe the Bushmen tribes of Africa. Embedded in his tongue is another barbell, employed in really animated conversations.

Danny clearly outguns the others, sporting 4 nose rings, a cascade of silver down each ear, a barbell through each nipple and countless sundry objects puncturing his lips and eyebrows. This part youth, part pin cushion, part Saint Sebastian had assumed leadership of the group following his part in the great Airport '99 disaster. A family holiday hoped, planned and saved for by Danny's parents never quite got off the ground. With the rest of the family successfully through to the Departure Lounge for flight 505 Melb-Bris, Danny approached the metal detection archway. A "CODE RED" security protocol was in place within 5 seconds of the screaming sirens, bells and whistles set off by this latter day Tinman. Even Jason who had gone to see Danny off was alerted to a sound just detectable above his ear jangling tinnitus.

When eventually retrieved from 10 battle fatigued S.A.S. troops by his mortified parents, Danny was grounded for 2 months, but he had grounded an entire fleet of aircraft for 2 hours. He is, apparently, "a legend".

By contrast, it is a bit of a mystery why Reece is part of this group. Apart from sporadic outbreaks of hormones-in-chaos acne, his face is unadorned and no sign of nipple or navel rings under his brooding black "Metallica" T-shirt. Although you prefer not to think about it, there is very likely something metallically unspeakable lurking inside his jocks qualifying him as a fully paid up member.

Kristin and Skye complete this set of "everybody elses" to which your daughter wishes to seamlessly attach her recently acquired individuality. Leaving just enough bits and pieces in place for her to remain an identifiable part of the cabal, Kirstin had recently modified her iron maiden look. This compromise resulted from her perilous morning forays to the fridge. Back at the table with the carton of milk, Kristin would spend the next 15 minutes detaching the fridge magnets that had leapt off the door and attached themselves to various bits of metal on her body. It was so uncool looking like the "Post-It" note capital of the universe.

Skye is a bit of a floater in this group. Now enthusiastically into "body modification" in the past she had been as passionate about health foods, "Free Tibet", whales, dolphins, supermodels, hippies, bootscooting, Buddhism and ABBA. She brought the same gusto to her latest lifetime commitment, sticking another fragment of metal into her body as soon as the infection had cleared up from the site of the previous implant. Skye's practice of doing all her own piercing, a legacy of her hippy/self sufficiency phase, had her local chemist stocking industrial strength Betadine by the pallet load.

You sit staring at the nose ring, hands twisting and coiling the dog's leash, your improvised chain of calming worry-beads and prayer answering rosary. At least Kate has spared you the "do-it-yourself" horror. Whilst the framed certificate at the "Cuts Both Ways Unisex Hair Salon" advertising Kylie's qualification as a "Fully trained Cosmetic Metallurgist" doesn't fill you with unqualified confidence, it might save you from a mercy dash to the nearest 24 hour emergency tetanus clinic.

Is this the thin edge of the piercing wedge? Today the nose, tomorrow an eyebrow, the next day ... whatever can be pinched can be pierced. There is no point in going to "Cuts Both Ways" pleading for moderation. You would make a goose of yourself, Kate would never speak to you again and Kylie would stymie you with chapter and verse on the sanctity of piercer-client confidentiality.

Little seems right about the passage of foreign objects into bits of the body, but you realise that this is one of Kate's chosen rites of passage and, like her, you'll have to wear it. In resignation your eyes lower, lighting on the dog's tangled leash. There in your anguished palms lies, 30 years too late, a perfectly formed reef knot.