As may be expected of me, I love the stories behind tattoos. Even if they’re stupid stories. Nothing motivates me to talk to a stranger more than seeing a paragraph tattooed on her shoulder blade. This is the story behind my tattoo, written right after I got it, which was a couple of years ago. Enjoy.
Like so many others before me, I went under the needle today. As a writer, I’ve said that I have ink running through my veins. Close enough, I guess.
Now, ideally, what this note will do is provide a poetic explanation of my freshly painted body art. I want a poetic explanation not because I feel I need to justify myself, but rather because I am a writer, and poetic explantions are what I’m all about. It might fall short of my hopes for all a poetic explanation should be, like so many poetic explantions tend to, but that’s just the way it goes.
When I was in the fifth grade, I sat in class with Mauricio Modiano and read Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes. We’d occasionally have to control our laughter, for fear of having the treasured comic book confiscated. I hold the belief that Bill Watterson made this planet a better place when he created Calvin and Hobbes. If I ever have children, I will do all I can to ensure they get his education at an early age. A couple of the Calvin and Hobbes collection books still sit on my shelves and near my toilets in Las Vegas and Mexico. I’ve quoted the comic strip in newspaper articles I’ve written, MUN speeches I’ve given, and in countless daily situations. Since the fifth grade, Calvin and Hobbes have been a part of me.
Of course, any tattoo on me has to include words. I am a man of words, as the saying goes. And though the words on my leg are not my own, I am an avid admirer of the beauty of language, regardless of its source. “This life is big” is a short, sweet sentence. It’s the final one in a story called Family on Ice by Jane McCafferty. The story is not particularly memorable, but that simple sentence is fantastic. Ever since I read it, I’ve found myself repeating it over and over. This life is big. The statement is vague and leaves nothing resolved. Yet it fills me up and leaves me alternatingly satisfied or grasping for more. Life is so much more than just “big”, but that’s all you can bring yourself to say sometimes. Like Cassie once told me, “This world is so much more and less than what everyone makes of it.”
Many grow to regret their tattoos. It’s impossible to say whether I will or not. But what in life is static? Life is dynamic. Things, people, ideas, opinions grow. They die. They ebb and flow and are forgotten about. If anything, I have captured- for the rest of my life- an idea I once held. Whatever future selves will think of my ink, myself of today is thrilled. As, I’m sure, my fifth-grader self would be too.
Leave me the story behind your tattoo in the comments section below!
