I was born in 1972 in Charleston, WV, and attended George Washington High School there, graduating as part of the class of 1990. One of my classmates was a sweet and talented, if a little geeky, girl named Jennifer Anne Garner. Some of you may have heard of her, as she discovered a talent for performing when she went to college, and has had a little success as an actress. Although I wasn't really close friends with her, we were in the same class, had friends in common, and got on quite well with each other. So we did spend quite a bit of time around each other both at and away from school, and had some quite fun times together with our mutual friends. 

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We didn't keep in touch with each other after graduation, when our lives headed off in very different directions. I stayed local to Charleston, got married and became a stay-at-home mom. Jennifer, on the other hand, headed off into the wider world. As she was no longer in the area and I didn't see her around, I never really thought about her all that much. However, after she got famous and I realized that I'd been at school with her, I did start to follow her career and read a lot of the interviews that she does where she talks about her life back when she was growing up.

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One thing I've noticed over the years is that she does like to play up the sweet and wholesome aspect of her upbringing, and always likes to talk about all of the rules her dad imposed on her and her sisters. Well, let me tell you, while it's true that she did have lots of rules to stick to, she was a lot more of a rebel than she likes to let on. 

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While the rest of us were copying the big hair and wild outfits that seemed ever-present in the late 1980s, Jennifer was very different. Her outfits were very sensible and practical, and it's true that she never dyed her hair and kept it straight(-ish) with no layers. As for not wearing makeup, well, she didn't if her parents were around. But, every morning on the school bus, she'd be there with her makeup bag, which she kept carefully hidden at home, putting on her makeup. And then, on the bus home, she'd be busy cleaning it all off again, taking great care to make sure she'd got every trace of it off before arriving back home.

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And as for her and her sisters not being allowed to get their ears pierced, well, the story Jennifer has told about that does seem to have changed several times over the years... Sometimes she says they weren't allowed to do it at all, while other times she says that they had to wait until they were sixteen before it would be allowed, but that her younger sister, Susannah, broke the rules and got hers done when she was fourteen. Sometimes Jennifer says that she's never had her's done, while other times she says that she has had them done and let them heal up again several times for movie roles or awards shows. 

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So what's the truth there? Well, it IS true that Susannah did break the rules when she was fourteen and get her ears pierced without permission. What Jennifer has never revealed, but I can tell you now, is that Susannah wasn't the only one to break the rules that day.

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The day in question was the first Saturday after Susannah's 14th birthday, and she'd gone to the Town Center mall with Jennifer (who was sixteen at the time) and a couple of their friends to spend some of her birthday money. What their parents didn't know was that Susannah had decided to spend it on getting her ears pierced at Claire's. While they were there, not only did Susannah get her ears pierced, she and their two friends also managed to persuade Jennifer to get her's done too.

 

So, the following Monday, the other girls at school and I were amazed when Jennifer got on the school bus and we realized that she was wearing little gold stud earrings in what looked a lot like newly-pierced ears. One of the other girls asked her "Jenny, have you had your ears pierced?" Jennifer grinned and said "yes", twisting her earlobe up to show us the post and butterfly on the back of it. Of course, we had to get the details from her about what had happened, and that's when we got the full story - including her dad's reaction when he'd found out. Apparently, when they'd sat down to dinner that night, Jennifer had been careful to keep her ears hidden by her hair, while Susannah had sat down with her's clearly visible. When he spotted what Susannah had done, he asked Jennifer if she'd got anything to tell him, and that's when she'd had to own up to also having had her's done too. While her dad wasn't really pleased at what they'd done, he agreed that they could keep them, as long as they didn't get any more piercings and kept their choice of earrings restrained.

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And both Jennifer and Susannah did follow the rules that their dad set regarding earrings, as neither of them did get any more piercings. As for her choice of earrings, most of the time Jennifer just wore small studs, although there were a couple of times when we did get her to wear some hoops. And Jennifer definitely kept her ears pierced for the rest of our time at school, but I guess she then let them close up again later on, as she certainly didn't have them done when I first realized who she was and started following her career.

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I know there's some of you out there who may be a bit sceptical about all of this, right? Well, I've always been really into photography and am never without a camera of some sort. Even at school I always had a camera with me, even if it was only a cheap compact, and was always taking pictures of all my friends and what we were up to. So I've got lots of pictures from back then, including quite a few of Jennifer. Some of the ones I have are of her alone, while others are of her with others. So I've posted some of the best of them below for you to see. Where there are others in the same picture, I've cropped the picture just to Jennifer, so as to protect their privacy. They're not in any particular order, and some are a bit grainy, but they do show that Jennifer did indeed have pierced ears while she was at school.

 

So here's the pictures - I hope you enjoy them.

(Click on any picture to get the larger version)

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