Sober reflections needed about 'body art'

My grandfather, a World War II-era Navy man, had a rather ugly tattoo on his arm. It was supposed to be his initials, but it didn't appear to be quite finished. He once joked with me that the reason his tattoo wasn't complete was that he had "sobered up" before the job was done.

Back then, only veterans and bikers had tattoos. Now, they're commonplace, and they're referred to as "body art."

I knew I had reached an experiential gulf with this issue (that's code for "getting old") when one of my Deseret Morning News colleagues was marveling over the "body art" that many of the players in the NCAA men's basketball tournament were sporting.

Except for the before-mentioned bikers and service members, most of the tattooed people in my experience were people I had encountered as a police and courts reporter. It's kind of hard to bring a fuddy-duddy like me around to thinking of tattooed convicts as people with "body art." For me, it's an entry on the "distinguishing mark or tattoo" line on the jail booking sheet.

My children tell me that I need to "get over" my aversion to tattoos. They're probably right. Tattoos are everywhere. I was surprised how many Olympic athletes competing in Athens had tattoos on their backs, shoulders and even thighs.

It's hard to imagine an Olympic athlete with love handles or flabby thighs, but let's face it, time has a funny way of altering the human body. We can't fight gravity. And for women, the rigors of childbearing tend to do all kinds of curious things to the body. I shudder to think what a tattoo on the midsection obtained in college would look like at the 30th class reunion.

I used to think that a pert 20-something with a tattoo would rue the day when he or she became a 30-something looking for a job. What 50-something human resources person would take such a person all that seriously? Then again, the 30-somethings will someday become the 50-somethings, and they probably won't have such hang-ups about "body art."

The safest route — for a lot of reasons — is not to get a tattoo. Although laser treatments can go a long way to erase old lovers' names committed to ink, a faint trace of the tattoo will remain. So the decision to get a tattoo shouldn't be entered into lightly. Ask yourself, will you want your high school prom date's name on your behind 10 years from now?