Get a Tattoo

I can now officially cross something off my list!

#7. Get a tattoo.

And ta-da! Here it is:

So, I feel this deserves a little bit of an explanation, mainly because some people have expressed some shock that I would actually get a tattoo. No, this was not a drunken, spur-of-the-moment decision. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile now.

Here's the back story (Warning! There is a dash of nerdiness ahead).

Remember back in the early part of the last decade (that seem weird to say) when the Lord of the Rings movies were huge and Orlando Bloom was the newest heartthrob and Dominic Monaghan had yet to become a Heroin addicted island castaway? "One ring to rule them all"? Right? Okay. So, I remember reading that the nine members of the cast who had been a part of the Fellowship had all gone together to get elvish "nine" tattoos. Up until that point in my life I really had never had any sort of interest in body art but something about this story peaked my interest. I thought it was sort of awesome that these nine people shared an experience that meant so much to them that they wanted to chronicle that experience in the form of something so permanent.

I however, have never been part of an epic, billion-dollar movie franchise (I know this is shocking, calm yourselves) so when would I have a chance to do something like that?

Then a couple years later a friend’s tattoo gave me further inspiration. This is actually the little brother of a friend of mine who died when I was in college. The brother now has a tattoo on his back in honor of my friend. As soon as I saw it something clicked in my brain. If ever, God-forbid, something were to ever happen to one of my sisters, I would do the exact same thing.

Queue more thinking. ( I think A LOT. It’s just something I do. And in this case, in something pertaining to needles and permanent body ink, thinking is good). And I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to just sit around and wait for some horrible reason to do this. Hello? Morbid.

So here we are today (or two weeks ago) and in honor of my 27^th year on this earth, my little sister and I figured, why wait? Let’s do this.

Actually getting the tattoo wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t completely painless – that sucker hurt. But it was more irritating than anything else and it was over really fast. Much thanks of course to Todd at Nathan’s Tattoo for being so awesome with a couple of first-timers.

And so now I have a tattoo! I haven’t quite gotten used to it yet and I keep wanting to look at in the mirror. It’s still in the healing process though and right now it just sort of itches like crazy. But I’m happy.

This is something that will mean something for the rest of my life. So many people in life come and go – co-workers, acquaintances, friends, boyfriends, etc. but my sisters have been through it all with me and no matter what, no matter how much we annoy each other or piss each other off or tease or whatever, we will always be sisters. So to them I say, this is for you. - Shannon