Tattoos have usually been seen as a form of rebellion and I suppose when I got mine at the ripe old age of 55 it could have been a sign of that. My husband had recently died and I didn't care much about anything anymore. I just felt I would do whatever I wanted with myself. I certainly never gave another thought to that old staple 'you know you can never get rid of them' that people trot out. Why should I care if a nurse saw it whilst she was bathing me in the nursing home when I was incredibly old. What did that matter? To me it was, and still is, only a symbol that I have really lived, that I have experimented during my life and my tattoo represents the least of my regrets.
I learnt a lot the day I impulsively called in at a tattoo parlour. It was the day I found that when you are my age and wear a long black city coat and heavy duty lace-up biker boots the all-male staff think you are from the VAT office and gulp nervously. It was the day that a huge, heavily muscled, Hell's Angel type with a ponytail gave me a lollipop to distract me as he delicately carved our own collaboration of a Celtic design on my shoulder and told me how he managed to pay his mum's mortgage. It was the day I learnt that black tattoos were more painful than coloured ones and that women bore the pain of a tattoo better than men (although I suspect that may be true I think he may just have been trying to get on my good side with that one). It was the day I got a permanent record of an interesting experience and both he and I learnt not to judge a book by its cover.
And maybe it's time that other people too dropped their preconceptions about tattoos and the people that wear them.
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