Before checking out my thoughts, please watch the video that inspired this post.

Would you let him give you a Tattoo?

I answered the question before I watched the video. –  No, I would not let him give me a tattoo. The man has no hands. To be specific, he has no arms either.

I attended high school with a guy who didn’t have hands, and he was quite the artist. So if you’re thinking that THAT’S the reason I wouldn’t let this guy give me a tattoo, think again. My reason has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me.

I don’t like tattoos. (THERE, I said it; rather, I wrote it!)

I LIKE people who LIKE tattoos; I LIKE people who HAVE tattoos; and occassionally, I like tattoos themselves. It’s like graffitti for the body. YOUR body. I don’t think I’d let the footed man (or a handed one) draw graffitti on MY body. Not that I haven’t EVER imagined such a scenario because in truth, there have been two occassions.

The first was when I lost my breasts to cancer. My plastic surgion offered a tattooed areola as part of the reconstruction. After giving it some thought, I decided against it. Cancer makes you tired of hurting. I didn’t want to hurt any more.

The second time I considered it was more recently, after chemo took my eyebrows. I was in a MAC store, buying a brow pencil when I met a woman who had tattooed eyebrows. They looked so realistic, I thought I might give it a try. That was before I decided that tattoos were not something to TRY, despite what tat lovers may claim. I chickened out of that one too.

Like I stated: It’s me.

There’s just something about having ink injected into my skin, that makes my skin crawl. Friends I know have no problem to committing to the deed – over and over again. When I think about it, the only people I know who have a single tattoo are the ones who either (1) regret getting it in the first place (i.e., they were young, intoxicated or both); or (2) ones who haven’t made it back to get a second tattoo.

I tried to imagine being one of those people. So I visited PINTEREST for inspiration, and I started following a board dedicated to mastectomy tattoos. Some of the work was hauntingly beautiful, especially when I learned the meaning behind the art. http://www.pinterest.com/personalink/mastectomy-tattoo-ideas/

Afterwards, I asked myself the question that I started with at the beginning of this post: ” Would you let him give you a tattoo?”

…uhm…

Maybe?