It’s better than drawing on yourself

A few months ago, Overdrive did a “Show us your ink” photo gallery for the page, and it gave me the fever for some new body artwork, so when our daughter asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day, I told her a new tattoo.

Good tattoo artists are as hard to find as good diesel mechanics, and they’re damn near as expensive. Being that I had chosen a pretty visible spot on my body for the new work, I wanted to make sure the person doing it wouldn’t forget to put my air filters in, or fit me with the wrong size head gasket, or give me a tattoo that I’d “regret.” A bad tattoo is hard enough to live with, but a bad tattoo on your wrist, that you had to look at every day and think, “that’s a bad tattoo,” would be just awful.

Custom work done for Marcie

This is the main reason I asked our daughter, instead of either of the Georges, for a tattoo for Mother’s Day. She has a lot of ink and it’s done well. She worked as a piercer in a tattoo shop in Virginia for a while, so she’s very particular about who puts permanent ink on her body. As the mother of a tattoo aficionado, I appreciate this more than words can say. Her ink is beautiful and colorful, and although I’m not sure it will retain the sharpness it has now, she has pieces that will still look good when she’s 80. (I can say this with a modicum of surety because when I worked in a nursing home, I saw a whole lot of naked 80-year-olds, and there were some pretty awful tattoos attached to some of them.)

Marcie set me up with a local artist named Dakota Warren, and he drew a custom piece for me. We all spent the afternoon at the tattoo shop as a family yesterday, while momma got inked up. (If that’s not an opening line to the best white trash family story ever, there isn’t one.)

Wendy and Dakota Warren at Blue Byrd Tattoo in Miamisburg, Ohio

I had several tattoos before this one, but none I’d show off. They’re all flash pieces, things a million other people have stamped on them somewhere, and while they were cool, or marked an event at the time, I don’t love most of them. This piece is different. I love it. It’s big enough to see, but small enough to hide in a very visible, but not visible place on my body. It’s excellent. It’s everything a tattoo should be, and it makes me understand why people like our daughter get huge pieces that never seem to end.

George is next. He’s already asked for his Father’s Day piece. He’s going to get something with a truck in it, I’m sure. I wanted a truck, but I’m not a true trucker and that piece should be reserved for the drivers, so I stuck (haha – pun totally intended) with a nod to the writer in me, and a reminder of how powerful the pen can be. Of course, when he gets his piece I will refrain from saying that him being “dead on the inside” is the reason he didn’t bleed much, because I am a decent human being and someone could probably take offense to a remark like that. Ahem.

Wendy’s new artwork

So if you’re ever in Miamisburg, Ohio and have a hankering for some pin pricks, look up ol’ Dakota. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of his face. There’s not any truck parking at his shop, but he says there’s a frontage road within walking distance that people park big rigs on frequently.

Thanks to our daughter for such a nice Mother’s Day gift, and thanks to Dakota for the great work. Now go out there and get inked!!

from Overdrive http://ift.tt/1RuFaTk




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