A girl never really appreciates a movie like "Boondock Saints" until she sees Connor and Murphy MacManus being tattooed onto a man's stomach. At least this girl never did.
The world of tattoos as body art and self-expression is not foreign to me, but it is distant enough to make each encounter I have with it slightly more intriguing than the one before. Such was the intrigue I felt when I entered Tempe's Lady Luck Tattoo this past week and was immediately greeted with artfully drawn guns mutually aimed at what looked to be a frequent customer's belly button.
"But Heather," you must be thinking, "you've spent the past two years making it evidently clear that you are not at all cool enough to live the inked way of life. Why even pretend you could change now?"
Well, friends, your observation is quite accurate. I have no tattoos. I've never actually wanted a tattoo. And in this selectively rare situation, I wasn't even drunk. But a good number of my close friends subscribe to the tattooed life, and I choose to vicariously brave the needles through them.
Therefore, when the opportunity arose to see my friend get one on his arm, I jumped at the chance like a 10-year-old wearing Nickelodeon moon boots.
While I sat there witnessing him make the only commitment I consider greater than marriage, childbirth and the self-hatred that comes when you realized how excited you are about "The Holiday" coming out on DVD, I started to think of some important issues to consider before getting a tattoo.
First, you should be fairly certain that you don't want to enter into a life of crime. A giant quotation of "[expletive] the Government" on your neck will most likely stick out in a lineup situation.
Secondly, crying doesn't eliminate pain. It just makes you look like you should have purple hair and your own show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
Lastly, facial tattoos are not for seasonally-hired Santa Claus impersonators.
Taking all of these factors into account, my mind then wandered to thinking about my own potential tattoos, provided I ever became cool enough to sport one.
Since middle school I decided that if - and only if - I was drafted into the military, I would tattoo a small section of my backside with an icon of my blood type. I am quite thankful, though, that this is no longer a requisite for combat involvement.
And, luckily the draft has been averted for several decades, since I'm pretty sure having to take my pants off in public for that extended period of time would make me wholly uncomfortable.
More recently, however, I've thought about covering myself in a Yakuza-style homage to Miller High Life. This would allow me to both show my eternal love for the champagne of beers and finally be able to participate in illegal street racing.
Sadly, though, I'd have to quit my weekly lunch date with Punisher.
There's also the possibility of doing my entire back with a version of The Incredible Hulk with my face, or perhaps an image of Max Fischer over my heart. I could even use my body as a canvas to help me out with my bad short term memory, so I could finally quit writing "do not believe his lies" on all my Polaroid pictures of Bill O'Reilly.
My favorite option, though, would be to emblazon the visages of several former Undergraduate Student Government presidents in Mount Rushmore-style on my chest.
Now that's a national monument worth remembering.
Heather Hull is a fluid graduate student with no static body art. Echo her fear of commitment at: heather.hull@asu.edu.
