perm-a-doodle

These are some of the things I hear on a semi-regular basis:

'Oh, somebody went to the club last night!'

'Did you get bored and doodle on yourself?'

'OMG, do you bathe? That thing has been on your arm for a week!'

'Did you get that in prison!?!?'

'You paid for that???'

'No. Really?'

And with great shock (and an unusual amount of rage): 'WHAT THE F**K?!??!'

Unfortunately all of these exclamations aren't in response to some sort of awesome battle scar from a meth-ed out bar fight, a respectably butch wound from a sports related injury, or even a disgusting birth mark. It's in response to my "tattoo." After you see the picture, you'll understand why I used the air-quotes. Only someone with a very low IQ or the worst taste ever would actually call this a tattoo. 


Here it is:

My best friend's sister calls it my 'Perm-A-Doodle.'

Feel instantly better about yourself and your life decisions thus far? You should. Other than getting knocked up by an unemployed, "DJ", with jacked up teeth and credit, I think it is one of the worst permanent thing that can happen to a impressionable young college student.

It was one of best friend's 21st birthdays, but unfortunately the big day fell during my university's spring break. My friend worked and I had a short vacation that year. Being a college town through and through, my friend and I were basically alone.

To help her ring in her special day, we went to a basically empty bar on a street usually bustling with young co-eds just getting their starter-DUIs. We drank a lot and somewhere around last call we decided it would be awesome to get matching tattoos!

This was pre-iPhone, so we actually had to call 4-1-1 for the numbers of any and all tattoo shops that were still open. Turns out, lucky #5 proved the winner open. Red Flag #1 + 2: it was after 2 AM and the "shop" was located on 34th Street and Hepatitis Avenue.

We loaded up our loaded selves into a Honda Element and drove over with dreams of beautiful B.F.F. tattoos! Red Flag #3: Us: "Hi, we want matching tattoos!" Scary looking tattoo shop worker: "I normally only do piercings." Us: "That's OK!"

He reluctantly agreed (probably Red Flag #4) and began to scribble the most pathetic looking peace sign I've ever barely remember seeing. We signed no waivers and proceeded to the back.

She went first. When the piercing guy was done I saw it. (Red Flag #5). It was too late for me though... We had made a drunken pact, her tattoo was done, and she was also my ride home. And, frankly, getting raped and/or offered some very low quality crack in one of the seedier parts of Lubbock, Texas didn't seem like acceptable alternatives.

As we drove home, we convinced each other it was the right thing to do. "Oh, I kind of like that it is imperfect. I mean no peace isn't perfect." I was a philosophy major at the time, and it felt like the perfect intellectual bulls**t to console a forever scarred idiot.

Nowadays, I hardly notice it until someone asks me if I get bored a lot and draw on myself. But I kind of like it, because it reminds me of my dear friend, and it is a constant reminder not to do something stupid like sign up to do a mud-run, turn down any venue that offers any sort of 'all-you-can-eat' or leave home without my phone.  

To be filed under things my tattoo reminder has NOT stopped me from doing: texting after 2 AM and/or 2 bottles of wine, continuously watching all three of the Transformers films (or any other film by Michael Bay for that matter), emotionally substituting take-out Pei Wei and hoarded Girl Scout cookies for a Friday night social life or boyfriend, and listening to that 'Call Me Maybe' song.

PS - My friend is working on starting her second successful business and just married a great guy. The most exciting or 'successful' thing I have done of late is see the Avengers. She must take this stupid reminder a lot more seriously than me...