Tattoo Me?

Hello everyone. Brian here.

Tattoos are all the rage, right? Nina has the Lorax on her back. We recently learned that Becky has some sort of homemade star somewhere on her torso. Nikole probably has some sort of dirty tattoo on her butt, left over from her wild years. Seth has some all-black tattoos on his arm that look like they were done in 1925. But me, I don't have any. I never really had the desire. But ever since my mom died in 1999, I have thrown around the idea of getting one. The problem is that I could never think of the right thing. I'm not going to get a permanent image on my body unless it really means something. And I guess it wouldn't hurt if it looks cool too.

Recently I had an idea. When I was young, my mom had a collection of small porcelain animals. I used to play with them even though she always told me not too. There was one little penguin that was particularly fragile. His one wing stuck out from his body, which made it break off very easily if it was dropped. I proceeded to drop it several times, and my mom would always glue it back on. It became sort of a joke because she would tell me not to play with them, and I always would, and the penguin would always break. But she never really got mad.

When she died, I inherited this collection of porcelain animals. I have that penguin with the broken wing. Here it is.

So I thought it might be cool to make this penguin into a tattoo, but I couldn't figure out how to make it look cool. So when my friend Bill was visiting recently, I asked him for some ideas. He is an artist, and if you have ever seen his paintings in my house, you know that he has his own way of looking at the world. So he started sketching up some ideas, and he came up with the very simple idea of viewing the penguin from a different angle. It turns out, if you look at him sort of diagonally from above, he looks much cooler.


Here is Bill's sketch.

So what do you all think? Do you think this would be a cool tattoo? I was thinking that I would get it on the inside of my upper left arm, so that when my arm is down, it is hidden between my arm and the side of my chest. Most short sleeve shirts would cover it. I just don't want it out there all the time. I don't want to have to explain it all the time, and I don't want it to be unprofessional for work. So I thought that would be a good place to put it. You could also say that it's close to my heart in that location.

One more funny thing. While Bill was drawing that sketch, he accidently knocked the penguin off the table and the wing broke off again. I had to glue it back on. I didn't get mad at Bill. It seemed fitting.

-Brian