Permanent Record

I recently acquired a new piece of art—and not for my living room walls or my office at work. I got my very first tattoo.

I know I’m kind of a late bloomer in this department. I can only name a handful of close friends who remain entirely uninked; a good chunk of my girlfriends have the standard “I just turned 18 and this star/Chinese symbol/butterfly is soooo pretty!” tatt somewhere in the region of their lower back or hip. Some of them regret them; some of them love them to this day.

I somehow missed that boat, despite claiming to want a tattoo back in high school. I always eventually planned to get one; it just never happened. I had ideas and I had the cash, but the opportunity just never arose, and in my late teens, I had better things to spend my money on—concert tickets and thrift store T-shirts to buy.

I’m pretty glad it happened this way. If I’d gotten the tattoo I wanted my freshman year of college, I would either have a design that looked remarkably like the Dallas Cowboys logo (I didn’t realize this at the time) on the back of my neck (ouch), or the most pedestrian of shooting stars on my right wrist (because I write with my right hand? And I like to write? And I’m gonna be a star? Or something). Neither of these designs would have been amenable to me now, seven years later.

Somewhere along the line, I had the fortunate realization that if I keep changing my mind about what tattoo I’d like to get, or where I’d like to get it, I probably won’t want whatever flavor of the month idea I’d settled on forever and ever, amen. College Amy had good sense—I’m thankful to not have an NFL team’s emblem perpetually adorning my neck, where I can’t even catch a glimpse of it in the mirror.

So when I got it in my head that I wanted a wagon wheel tattoo on my wrist, you can see why I might have been hesitant. What did I know about what kind of tattoo my future self might want? Or even be able to tolerate?

But then three years went by in which I still kind of wanted that wagon wheel. And recently, tattoos seemed to keep coming up in conversation. And then my roommate and her sister were going to get tattoos of their own, and did I want to come along? Of course I did.

I’m glad I’m not a walking advertisement for the Cowboys. I’m glad I don’t have anything written in a language I can’t read. I’m glad I never had the schizophrenic break it would take to get one of these sweet Twilight tattoos. But I’m glad I finally made up my mind.
No regrets, right?