Several weeks ago, Jordan, a friend of my son Michael, added a photo to his Facebook page. The photo showed Jordan’s girlfriend, Lauren, with her back covered by a large tattoo. Lauren’s masterpiece looked real to me … But was it?
I went through a reaction typical of people my age. I wondered why Lauren, in her 20s and with a Ph.D, would get a tattoo, and such a big one at that. I wondered what Jordan thought of it.
And I thought perhaps the photo was a joke, and the tattoo only temporary.
Last weekend, Michael, his fiancée, Sarah, Jordan and Lauren came to Roanoke and stopped by my house. I began to wonder how I had actually responded, online, to that Facebook photo. Did I decide it was real? Did I respond appropriately? Or had I boldly asked if Lauren really had done this, implying that she had lost her mind and ruined her life.
This is the sort of thing you fear when you are old enough to remember the guy who brought fish on ice to your neighborhood every Friday and sold it from the back of his station wagon to gathering Catholics (like us), but too old to remember what you wrote on Facebook.
And when you can remember the visit each summer evening from the Good Humor truck, with its college boy driver/salesman in white uniform ringing its bells to lure children from their dining room tables where their parents, most often, ordered them to remain.
But you can’t remember the time of tomorrow’s doctor appointment, though you double-checked it two hours ago.
My parents routinely withheld their OK in the Good Humor scenario, believing that too much unearned ice cream would wreck our ability to navigate the inevitable disappointments and deprivations we would face in adulthood.
The setbacks winged and wounded us anyway.
Now I wonder how my parents would have reacted if one of us, say, my sister, had turned up with her back covered in ink that depicted our grandmother ‘s favorite bird, as Lauren did, with hers.
On Independence Day I asked Lauren if the tattoo in the Facebook photo was real.
“Yes,” she said, and pulled up a bit of cloth in the neck area of her shirt to document her statement. I proceeded with my interrogation.
She had wanted a tattoo for years, she said, but moved ahead with it only after choosing a design that she thought her parents would find palatable.
The needlework took 3.5 hours to complete and became painful only in the final half-hour when the artist used a five-pointed device for the shading.
Afterwards, she went home and took a 20- minute bath in the hottest water she could stand to remove lymph and other impurities.
The procedure cost $350. Her tattooed skin healed in a matter of days.
I asked if the tattoo drew questions when she worked out at the gym, and she said it did, mainly from curious women.
Having no further questions, I set aside my gavel, rubbed my eyes and pronounced her not guilty, of what I was not sure.
We did prove one thing: A picture may be worth a thousand words, but only Lauren could tell the story.
– Joe Kennedy
Read more of Joe online at cuppajoekennedy.nlogspot.com
So good to hear from you, Joe, through Emily. I have the same problem trying not to judge and question inking by otherwise-reasonable younger people!
I share his shock and confusion! What will this look like in fifty years on wrinkled skin??
So nice to be reading Joe again.
How so?
Joe,
I certainly enjoyed reading a column of yours. I will certainly bookmark your blog and include as one of my many guilty pleasures.