Blank Canvas

I spend my days on the internet at work. Usually on 3 to 4 main sites, none of them porn, and on occasion I search for photo's to steal and post on this blog with out giving the original photographer any credit whatsoever including my husband's photo's, ( I promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore).

Anyway, I notice that there are a lot of tattooed moms out there and I started to wonder why am I not in that category. I'm cool. I'm pretty pale and permanent colors I think would look cool on my translucent skin. I have cool friends. I have two kids so I can clearly tolerate pain. I'm of age and I listen to cool music. I've lost special people. I have been through horrific situations and survived with all four limbs. I've lost weight, gained weight, pushed weight. I'm proud of my heritage and where I come from. I have family members struggling with cancer. All the factors are there, so why no urban markings of my indefinite coolness?

When I was about 11 my aunt's husband at the time was a "garage-cholo-tattoo-artist" and he was giving a tattoo to one of my mother's friends. I remember it like it was yesterday. My uncle was slightly uncomfortable because he was tattooing a pink Bugs Bunny type rabbit in the pelvic area of a grown gay man. He was a good sport about it taking his smoke breaks while we giggled about him catching 'the gay'. And on the last final break before he was going to finish, everyone had left the garage and it was just me and him. I jokingly grabbed the home-made tattoo gun and acted like I was going to give myself a tattoo. He looked at me and said, "I didn't see nothing..." so like the retarded, misguided, unattended child that I was, I gave myself a little dot on my lower leg. Not even a cool dot, not a smiley face, not a star, thankfully no gang symbols or names, no MOM in a heart, no cross, just a dot.

When I think back to that incident I can't help but burn with anger that I hadn't taken that golden opportunity to tattoo something more fantastic, something more memorable that I could regret right now. While the other part of me that is semi-normal, inwardly laughs and gleams with pride that even at that young age I wasn't THAT stupid to put something quite permanent and ridiculous on my body. Then there is that small fraction of my heart that always seems to get sad when I think about my childhood that coincidentally feels partly bitter and depressed that I didn't like something enough like Barbies, or a song, or a catch phrase, or a school, or a color, or a parent enough to commemorate them with what would have been a scraggly, undoubtedly ugly, faded mess by now.

I don't know why I haven't gotten anything since I turned 18. I was quick to get piercing's and poke holes every where I could. A part of me swears it's because of money. But reality is, I am not sure I would like something long enough to put on my body indefinitely. I am not sure I would be comfortable with a tattooer looking at my imperfect skin for that long or even touching me for that long. I look at my little dot in it's state right now and it's already faded into surrounding skin in the same fashion that a 70 year old war veteran's dancing pin up girl must look now.

Who knows, maybe when I reach my mid-life crisis point where I need to feel young, alive, relevant, non-trivial I will opt for something cute and dainty or gorilla and pimpish. Maybe I will get that cholo tattoo I've always wanted. Maybe I will get my grandmother's name tattooed right on my neck, or by my chest. Maybe I will just let my husband draw all over me in permanent ink and feel cool for a week. A week where I will no longer be a blank canvas but an image of marked beauty with legitimate significance.