If tatoos are the worst thing your children do, be very, very thankful! It could be sooo much worse. My 19 year old son got his very first as a tribute to his mother. It is very classy, and covers his entire right flank so that it CAN be covered when it is appropriate to do so.
SPONSORED BY:
Indelible Love: My Son's Tattoos and Me
Email To A Friend
Please fill in the following information and we'll email this link.
SPONSORED BY
And there seems to be an upside to all this. Where I used to see a child who was always a bit self-conscious, I now see a young man who is infused with genuine self-assuredness because he has more tattoos than anyone else he knows.
He struts through town with his head high as he greets our neighbors, his right sleeve rolled up as high as that day's shirt will allow, his arm a swaying canvas and his smile ear to ear.
He's an independent thinker, a hard worker; full of kindness and, for the most part, good judgment. So it's right that he stands by his tats, in spite of all my prophecies of future remorse, of the potential for hepatitis C from an infected tattoo needle, not to mention the inevitability that all those colors and the Buddha and the big cats and the waterfalls will one day meld into a wrinkled mass.
While I will most likely worry forever about his having to hide his arm (and, as of last week, his left shin) from future bosses or potential fathers-in-law, Alec has come into his own—a young man comfortable in his own skin, ink and all.
And who knows—maybe he'll reconsider adding any more tattoos to his motif. After all, the pierced lip lasted only one day.
Desocio lives in Maplewood, N.J.
© 2007
Discuss