Moo Deng. Mother Goose. Snowman. Gummy bear.

No, these are not part of a Connections category. These are just some of senior Bailey Goldstein’s “30-or-so” collection of self-proclaimed “kooky” earrings.

“Some people collect shoes, and that becomes part of how they like to represent themselves,” Bailey said. “I choose to collect earrings.”

Bailey got her ears pierced the summer before seventh grade at a tattoo parlor with her twin sister Emery Goldstein and their longtime neighbor and close friend Margot Martin. Martin and Emery were both nervous before the piercing.

“Bailey was not scared, though,” Martin said. “She really wanted to get her ears pierced.”

After starting out with studs, Bailey began wearing eccentric and dangly earrings from her mom’s collection from the 80s. While Emery slept, Bailey and her mom, Janis Goldstein, stayed up late to dig through her jewelry cabinet, where Janis would share stories about each pair of earrings.

“It was a dream come true to go through my earrings from the 80s up until the present time, reliving the eras and sharing them with my daughter who cared,” Janis said. “For me, it’s been very meaningful and very special —-meaningful that she’s willing to listen to my stories.”

Bailey’s collection extends from her mom’s jewelry cabinet to birthday gifts and online finds. Her favorite pair of earrings are hoops encrusted with rainbow gemstones from a flea market at the Houston Glass Show & Sale.

For Hanukkah one year, Janis gifted her a pair of gold hoop earrings with small snakes.

“Bailey opened them and started laughing,” Emery said. “And my mom’s like, ‘What?’ And Bailey is like, ‘These look like sperm,’ and they do. I think she has worn them sometimes.”

Bailey chooses her earrings every day depending on her mood.

She wears fun earrings like her Moo Deng earrings when she feels “loud,” or energetic. If she feels extra tired in the morning, she opts out from wearing any earrings at all. On stressful days, she dons dangly earrings like a pair of acrylic Mother Goose earrings that she can fidget with during a test. After one of her two guinea pigs passed away, she wore custom guinea pig earrings gifted from Emery for at least one week.

“I think besides art, [her earrings are] where she expresses most,” Martin said. “I think it gets her ready for the day. She always has fun earrings on because she wants to bring some joy into her life, even if it’s gonna be a hard day.”

Bailey is a third-year student in art and takes IB Visual Art HL. She has dabbled in watercolor, acrylic and 3D sculpting with cardboard and paper mache.

“A lot of my art is very neat, so I guess I dress pretty neat, and then earrings are the one thing that I allow to be kind of kooky or stupid,” Bailey said.

Earrings blend into Bailey’s artistic life. Several years ago, she and her family were at Fuddruckers when her snowman earrings fell out.

“My dad picked it up off the floor and stuck it in a french fry,” Bailey said. “And sometimes I think of that when I am drawing in my sketchbook, about how random your sketchbook can be.”

Bailey got her second lobe piercing last year when, during a fire drill at school, she texted her family group chat, “Anybody want to come pick me up and we can play hooky and go get my ears pierced?” as a joke.

Her dad answered, “Let me pick you up and let’s go.” The year before, he was diagnosed with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a neurodegenerative disease that affects motor neurons, and he “still had mobility and was able to go out.”

“It’s one of those things where it has a lot more sentiment because of the condition he’s in,” Emery said. “It’s very much a thing that he and Bailey would do, and they did, and now she’s got a second piercing.”

With two piercings, Bailey can now wear both pairs of colorful gummy bear earrings gifted from a friend for her birthday.

“The whole ‘clean girl’ aesthetic is one of those things where I can admire it from afar and just know that that’s never going to be me,” Bailey said. “I like color too much. I like being able to wear as much color as possible or accessorize, even if I am wearing all black or all blue or something.”

If Bailey woke up one day without pierced ears?

“I have clip-ons from my mom’s 80s collection,” she said.