Just a thought
So, here’s the thing:
the niece is now the proud owner of her very own tattoo. I suppose this development was inevitable;
she is twenty now and she was looking for a change more permanent than that
provided by her ever-shifting hair color.
I have not seen this tattoo and neither has anyone else, as far as I know,
and I believe the reason for this is that she does not want her grandmother to
find out that she’s gotten one; my mother has what might best be described as a
profoundly negative opinion of tattoos and tattooing brought on by my naval
brothers’ enthusiastic patronage of the art.
Still, I hear that the niece is very proud of the tattoo, so I will keep
my opinion to myself when next I see her.
Tattoos are the fresh fruit of art; one sees them to best advantage when
they are brand-new, as the canvas does not, to put it mildly, age very
well. I must, however, admit to a
certain bemusement about all of this; I know that tattoos are all the rage
nowadays, and one should excuse the young for wanting to follow the fashion of
the day, but there are few things in life that confirm my belief that no twenty
year old ever believes they will be fifty some day than a tattoo. One may as well tell the young that the sky is
not blue than tell them that their youth is not a permanent condition. They
will smile at you and think, what does he know, the old coot?
Labels: middle age, Roberta Vasquez, tattoos, the passage of time, the young, youth
5 Comments:
At 4:08 AM,
SnoopyTheGoon said…
Yep. Sometimes I wish, though, I could draw something more than a view of cat's posterior. Maybe then I could have made a career in tattooing business.
Unless, of course, the market for an artistic (oh well...) depiction of cat's posterior opens up.
At 8:49 AM,
Anonymous said…
You're just jealous that naval brother of yours has more influence on young minds!
[disclosure: I hate tattoos from esthetic pov. I think they destroy the logic of human body. even those that claim they follow it]
At 10:41 AM,
Akaky said…
I have three naval brothers, Tat, one a former Seabee and the father of the aforementioned niece, who somehow managed to evade the tattooing craze, one a retired chief petty officer who has one very small tattoo on his arm, and the third, a former gunner's mate, whose enthusiasm for the skin arts clearly got the better of him, which annoys my mother no end. There's nothing like seeing a naked redheaded woman wearing a pirate's hat stuck forever on the arm of your second son to cause your average devout Irish Catholic mother to have industrial strength agita, and that doesn't include the bits on his other arm and on his legs and on his back as well.
At 12:39 PM,
Anonymous said…
I can sympathize: she is the one who created that perfect body, and he is doing his best to destroy her creation!
At 5:14 AM,
Dick Stanley said…
Youth is, as they say, wasted on the young, who don't even realize they are young. Some (but not many) tats are tasteful, especially when small and held to a minimum in some inconspicuous place like an ankle or a shoulder. But there is nothing quite as pathetic as the aging haus fraus I see at the market whose arms are covered with fading ink from their days as (presumably) hot young things.
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