The Tattoo And Mum Story

For the benefit of those who aren’t on Facebook and didn’t get to read this story, here it is.

For the time since puberty kicked in and I fully appreciated the merits of women, cleavages and short skirts, I’ve been fixated on – and my choices skewed towards – women with sharp noses and tattoos. Yes, skin ink is very much a visual treat for me and it unhooks the belt buckle a tad faster.

When I got my first 2 tattoos done, I kept it from my mum for about 4 years until a stretching incident gave it away. The great thing is that parents can’t really get pissed over something that is almost irreversible.

Get your ear pierced, and they can get you to take it off. Get caught smoking, they force you to quit. Get pregnant, and watermelon, a baseball bat or an accidental push down the stairs can prove to be quite adept solutions.

Yes sure, there’s always the option to laser off the tattoo, but that money is so much better spent on other necessities in life like, groceries, insurance and cable TV.

When my mum found out about the tattoos, she made me promise that I wouldn’t get another one. She threw in huge words like, ‘crazy’, ‘inappropriate’ and ‘gangster’, gave me articles on diseases transmitted via tattoo needles and randomly made up stories about people getting killed because of tattoos.

I obviously knew I wanted more so I made no such promise, got a new one and introduced her to Miami Ink. God bless cable television. Then couple years on, I told her that I was planning to get another back piece and she made a passing remark about getting one if I did a new one.

Obviously, I didn’t take her too seriously until she repeatedly brought it up, whether I was surfing the net or lazing around the couch. Eventually, I went ahead with mine and she finally got tired of asking me and told me,

“I want to get it done before the year ends.”

This was the coolest thing my mum has ever said, other than that one time she said, “here’s the key to the car”.

The flip side was that she didn’t know what she wanted and I didn’t want her to rush into it because if 3 months down she decides that she hates the design, I will hear no end to it and I will be introduced to new tattoo aversion words like ‘regret’ and ‘waste of money’. And I might seriously consider slicing my ear off and let kids play hop scotch with it.

It was also amusing for me at some point that was going to put my mum through pain as a gift, but it was also the coolest thing I think anyone can give to their mum for Christmas - other than an affair with Santa.

Then we finally made the trip down to the shop after finally settling on the Virgo’s symbol which is essentially an ‘M’ with a fanciful curved tip and an ‘n’ merged right next to it. Go Google it, you’ll see what I mean.

This was symbolic on three tiers. For one, my mum is a Virgo. Her name also starts with the letter ‘M’ and lastly one of the first girls that was cleanly shaven that I hooked up with had a similar tattoo at her pelvic – not that my mum would be happy to know this.

While my tattooist prepared the stencil, mum started browsing through the tattoo books and immediately highlighted several tattoos which she thought were nice. This included flowers and fairies. Then she stopped at one.

Mum: “This one is nice. I like it.”

I turned to see her finger tapping against the picture in the book. It was a tribal design of sorts and of which I only fully realized the design after she lifted her fingers off it. It was, of all symbolic representations, of all mocking ironies, of all sum of fate,

A butterfly. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And just when I thought the irony ended there, I realized that my mum is now, hiding the tattoo from my dad. Nostalgia makes a great movie. All I know is that she said something about, ‘the right’ to tell my dad. 30years and she still doesn’t know that there is never a right time when it comes to dad.

My mum rocks. Am I the greatest son or what.