Baby Got Ink

My sweet, darling daughter has conjured up an obsession with tattoos. Some may think no, she's a baby and is just drawing on herself. But really, she calls them her tattoos, and whenever she sees someone with ink, she smiles so broadly and points it out to everyone around. When she's giving herself her tats, she says, "ouch, that hurts."

I have no problem with tattoos. I have a little one on my hip that I had done my freshman year in college. Bob has one on his thigh. I'm actually a big fan of tats. When Bob and I were in Vegas in March, we went to Hart & Huntington in the Palms Casino to get some fresh ink. We both wanted Grace and Denny's names done. However, it was a 7 hour wait, AND it would have cost over $1,000. No thanks. I wasn't that hot at the craps table. So we passed but are still planning on getting some new ones. I'm waiting for our next vacation because I have this idea in my head that it won't hurt that much if I'm somewhere warm and tropical.

When I was growing up, I didn't hear NO from my mom very much. Not in a spoiled way, but she just gave me room to grow and do my own thing. As long as I wasn't doing anything totally out of control, I was given a lot of freedom. EXCEPT for one thing: tattoos. Mom didn't care about the belly ring I got on spring break when I was 17-years-old, my array of idiot boyfriends didn't bother her, etc, etc...

So one day when I came home from school for a weekend, I got up the nerve to show her my new tattoo. I was proud of it. Bad, Bad, Bad idea. I'd never seen her so mad in my 18 years of life. To this day, she's never been so pissed at me as she was that day. For over a month, my mom would not speak to me. The only reason she started is because of a family "incident" that occurred and we needed to talk.

A few years passed and I finally got answers to why a silly little tattoo got her so fired up. My mom said when she was a teenager, her mom forbid her to get a tat. She always played with the idea of getting one, and thought it could be something that her and I did together. So now it makes a little more sense.