Sometimes I think, “Hey you know what might be cool? Getting a tattoo.” Then I say it out loud and my wife looks at me and shakes her head. She doesn’t even say anything. I know she thinks that she’s very scary and can intimidate me into making wise decisions, and she’s right about that most of the time, but that is not the main reason that I remain tattooless. I fear making a poor decision in the tattoo department even more than I fear her.
Tattoos are a big commitment. First. You have to pick a place on your body to display this picture or foreign word that does not mean what you think it does. Ankle? Nope. I’m not a girl. Calf? Nope. That’s just an awkward spot. Forearms? Nope. I may have to apply for a respectable job at some point. Neck? Nope. Just nope. Face? What do I look like, an inmate, or some disgraced former heavyweight champ. Upper arm? Okay, maybe. It is a classic location. Shoulder blade? Maybe. Lower back?…. When I was working in New Jersey, there were some guys painting our shop building. They would show up in the morning to get started at about the same time we showed up. One morning, one of the painters was bent over cleaning out a paint bucket. His shirt had ridden up revealing a sizable tattoo on his lower back. I don’t remember what it was of. For my own enjoyment I like to remember it as dolphins or Chinese lettering, or maybe even something like “Gary Glitter Forever”. Anyway. My partner, who, much to my delight, had no filter between what he thought and what came out of his mouth, immediately blurted, “You’ve got a tramp stamp.” A great conversation with an embarrassed painter followed. Long story short. He said that he had gotten it before they were known as “tramp stamps.” I was unaware that there was such a time.
The second thing about the whole tattoo commitment thing is choosing a design. That’s hard. I can start out by eliminating some things. Barb wire, words in other languages, realistic pictures of people, sports team logos, tribal designs, rock band logos. Because of varying degrees of tackiness, those things are not options. So I sit here and think. What could I put on my body permanently that represents something that has never let me down. Something that I’m sure will never let me down. Something that is very important to me. No matter how long I think about it or how many times I think about it, I always end up with a burrito on one shoulder blade, a slice of pizza on the other, and Dr Pepper across my knuckles. Aaaaaannnnnndd, there you have it. The reason I have no tattoos.
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