In 1975, Wisconsin’s only tattoo parlor was in Lake Geneva, and that’s where I was headed on my 18th birthday.
I can’t recall where the force behind this wild desire came from, but I remember its strength.
Decades later it took someone shaking me awake to finally understand why my adolescent son would always answer “I don’t know!” to my endless “What were you thinking?”
“They don’t know why they do things, they just do them,” some expert told me, explaining the latest disorder, it must have been reactive-compulsive neurosis.
As if some blow to my brain had blocked out what it’s like to be young and utterly unconcerned, oblivious to consequence.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were like that too. I always thought there was something wrong with me,” my son said to me the other day.
I just knew I had to get a tattoo.
The trip took a friend and I down country roads to what seemed like a sleepy town, except for maybe the Playboy Club. We were liberated women then, so even the famous den of feminine playthings for male egos was of no consequence to us. We had boyfriends, what did we care what horny old people did?
I remember a guy with a pony tail, walls full of designs, and pain that felt like someone was dragging a lit cigarette across my skin.
I picked out a butterfly, to be placed at the nape of my neck. I’ve always worn my hair long, so for most of its 34-year existence this tiny tattoo has been hidden from view.
My mom wasn’t happy when she found out, especially when she discovered on my wedding day, that my younger sister also had one - a small bird with a vine in its mouth, and a heart at the end. That freaked me out because she is what I call a “Jockaholic.”
According to Diane my mother said: “If God intended you to have a tattoo you would have been born with one.”
Neither of us regret it, and to the tattoo naysayers who believe someday there will be an epidemic of nursing home residents, with sagging, distorted tattoos, I have to say if we are sagging that badly all over, would it really even matter?