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A lot of folks have tattoos, and I’m among those who have paid a complete stranger a lot of money to draw on me with permanent ink. Perhaps we were the kids growing up who enjoyed coloring on ourselves and our friends with a Sharpie. Epidermal artwork is there forever unless you’re in a gang and want to leave, then they’ll manually scrape it off for you – and without pain meds, I might add.
My neighbor has a tattoo on the side of his torso and inner arm of
an alligator that appears
to open its mouth when he raises his arm, for cryin’ out loud. How can this
possibly be good unless you wrestle alligators for a living, which he does not.
He had fun for a while letting people take photos of their heads in his armpit, but at $2 a photo he’d need a lot of them to recoup the $750-plus tip he paid for that ridiculous thing.
I don’t know if I’d want an accountant doing my taxes with a neck tattoo that states, “The world is ending,” or a surgeon with body ink that reads, “Go ahead, make my day.”
My only advice to those tattooing the name of their sweetie-pie on their bodies is that if it doesn’t work out, date someone else with the same name so as to avoid any conflicts with the new person.
Make sure that oriental tattoos read exactly the way you want them to. I took a stoned artist’s word for it when I got mine, and now I’m not entirely sure it’s not a menu item from a buffet written across my back. He went out of business two weeks later.
I could ask someone who would be able to read it for me, but I’m kind of afraid to know. The lettering just looked interesting at the time, which is why I got it.
Getting inked should never be done while partying, as a result of a dare or because a friend got one. Twins are the exception because they do a lot in tandem, but it should be the same tattoo so as not to break the similarities.
Tattoos are cool if they memorialize someone, have a special meaning or are done as a result of being put into the witness protection program. Just remember, they may cause a problem with employers or relationships.
I had a friend who made a painful mistake by adding an additional child to the family portrait done on his back. I’m not sure how he managed that, but the scars on his back indicate his wife clawed it off of him herself.
Tread carefully when laying that rubber down, it’s forever.
Keep in mind, age has a way of changing the looks of everything.
I got a smiley face tattooed on my inner arm when I was 18. It looked happy back then, but at 60 “he” looks like one of those wind socks that advertise a business. Have you ever seen a smiley face flapping around? It’s kind of scary.
A school chum of mine was born in Beijing. She got a tattoo that read “made in China.” Now that’s a tattoo that will last the test of time.
Make sure the tattoo artist can spell. As a kid, my pastor got a tattoo that was supposed to read “Jesus saves” instead it read “Jesus shaves,” and maybe He did, but I couldn’t find it in the Bible. The pastor was constantly having to explain to his congregation that it was just a spelling error and not a broken rule or example from Jesus.
Anngee Quinones-Belian lives in Murphy. She loves humor and believes the world needs more of it. Email her at anngeeq@gmail.com.