Today’s high temperature hit 98 degrees in our small Midwestern town. The heat index soared to 112.
Too hot to move… unless, of course, you were doing so under water.
Fortunately, our neighborhood contains a nice-sized swimming pool, which was beyond packed today thanks to Mother Nature’s brutal heat wave.
Among the hundreds of pool-goers were plenty of babies in bikinis, tons of Croc-wading toddlers, and a slew of inked-up mamas.
The tatted mommies were out in full force today, and it was all I could do to keep my young daughter from playing connect the tattoos with her curious little finger as we sat in the kiddie pool.
At first my clearly sheltered offspring thought the inked images of butterflies, hearts, and in some cases, the Green Bay Packers’ logo, were body stickers. She wondered out loud (on more than one occasion) how it was that the black angel wings drawn on one mom’s ankle didn’t fade despite the fact that it was submerged in water for hours.
Believe me; I had much more success explaining the science behind indelible ink and how it is stitched onto one’s skin than I did getting my daughter to understand why it was that mommies decide to add these ubiquitous symbols of individuality to various parts of their body… and how she would be grounded for life if she ever chose to join the tat club while she was still living under my roof.
Oh yes I did.
I don’t want my kid getting a tattoo.
There, I wrote it.
What she does when she spreads her wings and finally flies away from home is out of my control. However, no child of mine is going to pull a Miley Cyrus and get inked three times before her 17th birthday.
In my opinion getting a tattoo is an adult decision. Tats are permanent… okay; semi-permanent if you have a big bank account and the willingness to sit through a long and arduous tat removal procedure. What’s more, an ink job doesn’t always age well.
Would you let your kid get a tattoo? If so, how young is too young to get inked?