inked

I have two tattoos.

This is my first one. "In medias res" is a phrase that means "into the middle of things", which is a writing technique that starts a story in the middle of the action. It is placed just over my hip and my dad has a matching one on his shoulder.

My second tattoo contains a quote from the novel Jane Eyre.

The vast majority of the times that people ask about me about my tattoos and I explain their meanings, there are two different reactions:
1)    Confused silence followed by a long, drawn-out “okay”
2)    “So you’re like a librarian or something?”

Despite the years of deliberation and meaning I put behind them, all people go away with is the fact that I like books. But since I like you guys, I’m going to share a story about one of my tattoos that I hope will stay with you and prevent you from making some stupid, stupid mistakes like I have done.

After waiting a week for my tattoo artist to draw the final design and gain my approval, my dad, my boyfriend, and I went in to the parlor to have it inked on my skin. The design was beautiful, my boyfriend and my dad looked it over and agreed it was perfect. I quickly signed off on all the paperwork that the design was exactly what I wanted and got ready to endure my session. Halfway through getting it tattooed, the artist suddenly stopped and yelled “Fuck!”. After a minute of being convinced that he had hit a vein that would lead to me slowly and painfully bleeding to death, I found out that there was a misspelling on the quote that none of us, including my English Professor father, had noticed until then. The “C” in “obscure” had been left out and I now had “obsu” emblazoned on my shoulder. He wound up putting witch-hazel into the mistake with the tattoo gun and had me do the opposite of all the care tips for tattoos in that one small area. After a week of contorting to poke and offend that spot, the layer of dead skin with the mistake came off and I was able to return to finish the design.

And that is how I learned a valuable lesson about proofreading.

For your entertainment, my father captured the essence of getting my "in media res" tattoo.

much love,
hedgie