My father was a Merchant Mariner, and the family history, on both sides, is crammed full of merchant mariners; well, OK, on my mother’s side there were a few Privateers ( !!Not Pirates!!).
In any case, there was a sea of ink embedded in the skin of my family members over the generations. But not on me. You’d think, given the family background, that I’d have marched automatically to the tattoo parlor when I turned 18 and got a nice, large eagle over my skinny chest. Nope.
The reason was my father, the possessor of a distinguished eagle on his forearm. He sat me down one day before I enlisted in the Navy and told me about the typical groggy reel to the tattoo parlor on liberty with the other young fools you’d been hanging out with. He was graphic in describing the potential infection from dirty needles, botched work, misspelled names of lovers, and other inconveniences. Then he described how tattoos were used by law enforcement as a means of ID – “Yes, officer, he had a big eagle on his left arm!” Not being too choosy, Officer Opie chose from among the ten sailors in the drunk tank who had an eagle tattooed on the left arm. After this talk, I was left to cogitate about getting or not getting a tattoo.
Later in the Navy, I saw the correctness of my father’s examples: sailors with infections, poor designs, and all sorts of complications. It made me glad that I chose not to have one inked in. Then, over the past decade, there has been the close-to-universal adoption of all kinds of tattoos. Facial, body, and intimate areas- well, seemingly no part of the body has been excluded. Yes! Grandma gets hauled in by Opie; her tat matches the description of one on a mug who assaulted someone down at the hang out on Main Street! Shocking…a lady of ninety resorting to crime!
But right to the question: If I were to get a tattoo now, what would it be? Well, I think it might be fun to get a temporary tattoo. One that would fade and disappear in, say, a week or two. A nice eagle across my chest!
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Not yet 90, and I will never be a grandma (never had kids); it never occurred to me two years ago, when I got my first and only tat, that it would be a way of IDing me to the cops! Drat! (When I walked into the tattoo place, which had a decidedly biker feel to it, the guys were polite but had the “oh god, fat granny is getting a tattoo–YOU take her!” expressions (old skin is hard to ink).
That last bit I didn’t know. But don’t get picked up by Officer Opie!
My I’m-not-sure-it-is-legal aging Mustang sometimes makes that difficult…
This is the reason I question vanity plates on vehicles. Too easy for the cops to find you when you raced through that red light!