First off kids, don’t try this at home or for any high school or collegiate paper for which you will be graded. I am a highly trained and 40-hour a week salaried professional. What you are about to witness, if I can pull it off, is a column which weaves three, seemingly unrelated topics into one coherent lettered masterpiece.
I ask for your silence.
Drum roll, please . . .
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I grew up in a time and place in America that was pretty much, how do I put this tactfully as not to upset the standard bearers of our community, lily white. Protocol was adhered to at all costs and chaos was managed. Change was frowned upon, disruption and free will quelled. Tattoos where for U.S. Marines and sailors and anybody who passed through town, just out of prison heading to other places to reside, say like Waterford or Pontiac. If you haven’t guessed yet or didn’t ever know it, I grew up in Clarkston in the 1970s and 80s.
So, why is it then, oh for the last nine or ten years, do I keep coming up with this idea of getting a tattoo or two? What sort of devil is dancing in my thoughts?
I am not saying there are devils or ghosts who try to influence the thoughts and actions of men and women like my own dear Aunt Janice might say (she, does, by the way, have tattoos). I have had Janice up to Clarkston as a special guest-fund-raiser-attraction for a few events at The BirdFeeder/Clarkston Flower Shoppe/Bonnie & Clyde store. There, she told a lot of folks some things they were surprised by. Some smiled. Others cried. Her efforts to rid a Wayne County home of a nasty spirit was even written about in a book a few years ago. Because of her gift (or curse) she’s got street cred.
She might say some one or some thing is actually whispering into my ear, ‘Get a tat, dear one. For me. For you.?
I will have to ask Janice and see what she is seeing and or hearing from the other side around me. I don’t know. I usually don’t ask Janice to see what I cannot see about me. Ignorance in the world of spooks, to me, is bliss.
I don’t know.
First, I wasn’t a Marine, I am most assuredly a lubber of land and I ain’t been to prison. According to my (while not Protestant) honkey upbringing the idea of having some stranger stick needles into my flesh and then color it with permanent dye should be a no-brainer. No, no and more no to getting inked.
And yet . . . there is that sweet little nudging at the back of my neck.
I don’t know.
Second, I am pretty much a creature of habit. Don’t believe me, get a load of this crap. When I was young and impressionable and growing up in Clarkston, my favorite TV show (for all of about two nano-seasons that it lasted) was Kolchak, The Night Stalker. It was about this newspaper reporter who investigated mysterious crimes that usually turned out to be of the supernatural in cause. I dug that short-lived show. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter like Kolchak. And, I am . . . And, do you know what else?
He wore cheap suits and puffy, white tennis shoes. I love, white, puffy tennis shoes. Can’t get enough of them. I’ve worn them since college. I buy them as soon as the current puffy, white tennis shoes wear out (and sometimes before). I am never without white, puffy tennis shoes. I wear them with dark dress slacks and with sports jackets. I wear them with shorts and I’ll wear them with jeans.
I love my puffy, white tennis shoes so much, at least one person near and dear to me pokes fun at me; will send me pictures of Sean Penn and other people wearing white, puffy tennis shoes with a cutesy remarks.
So, I am not that guy who just goes out and changes things up for the sake of changing things up. And still, gentle nudging persists. If I were to get a tat or two, not saying I will, they would be hidden. Like, on my upper arm, just below the tops of my shoulders.
Thirdly, I am also one of the cheapest guys around. Tattoos no one would even see costs, good, hard-earned money that can be used for other things, like — well like a new pair of puffy, white tennis shoes.
Fourthly, as I am not a Marine, only a newspaper guy, I have to admit: I am soft. Oh, and I am squeamish, too. Pain hurts and tatoos have got to be painful, I might pass out or something. You may not know this, but I do have my pride and passing out would be embarrassing.
The idea was to have a shamrock on each shoulder. Under one shamrock would be son Shamus? name; under the other son Sean’s. I shouldn’t. I should.
I don’t know. Readers, what say you? Email me Don@ShermanPublications.org