Josh First's Blog

Best tattoo, ever

I am not a tattoo person. No one in my family had or has tattoos, including me, same for my wife. The rural people I grew up with occasionally had tattoos, all associated with their military service. When this current tattoo craze took off, what, fifteen years ago, I admit to being surprised. Some of the choices I have seen are… curious. When I ask the wearer why this particular tattoo, I usually get back an indifferent shrug and something like “I was feeling especially whimsical that moment.”

My various sports coaches all taught me one important lesson: Your body is your temple, and you must respect it. I am not judging anyone, but please think a little harder or look at some pictures of pretty flowers, before deciding to forever alter the body God gave you at birth with some of these tattoos. Yes, the Maori warriors have some gorgeous tattoos representative of their culture as head hunters and cannibals. But your culture is mid-America white girl and white boy, not savage warrior, nor tough about anything, really.

Because I work with a lot of rural loggers and machine operators, who are the epitome of tough as hell and who in my book earn the right to even culturally appropriative self expression, I do get a pretty dandy gander at tats running from hand to neck, and, I am told, in other more “remote” body locations. I admire the ones that had a lot of thought, deep symbolic meaning, planning, and careful execution put into them.

Starting decades ago in the military services, which until Marxist in Chief Obama and China’s Man in DC Joe Biden was largely populated by rural Americans, tattoos are no longer just a military or rural fad, as the entire country became enamored of the self expression and inevitable interesting interpretations of sagging aged flesh sure to come with time. Even demure, serious soccer moms have Playboy Bunny on their ankles. I have even seen effete feminine urbanite Marxist hipsters with their own tattoos (I wish I was rich enough to be a socialist like them), as well as the myriad blue and pink haired far left, Antifa, even conservative patriot bikers, too.

Well, today I got to see the best tattoo ever, in the history of tattoos. It wins all the awards for creativity, simplicity, symbolism, etc. The owner is covered feet to neck in tats, and when I asked her if she had any regretted old boyfriend names lurking anywhere among the visual mayhem, she said “just the initials of my ex husband, now artfully incorporated into and erased by a tattoo of the toxic waste symbol”. She then showed me. It is small, easily lost among the rest of the colorful inks, and not particularly artistic or flowing or eye catching, but I swear, it is the best tattoo ever.