My Tattoo Memories
Sorry I was not able to put this up yesterday (Wednesday); I did not have access to a computer in the afternoon/evening. This post will be a little different than normal because I won’t be telling stories behind any tattoos. Rather, I will be telling some of the memories pertaining to my tattoo, most of them having to do with my sweet little nephew, Wyatt.

Wyatt was two years old when I got my tattoo, and he was fascinated with it. He saw me the day that I got inked, when I still had to keep the tattoo bandaged, so he concluded that “Aunt Minnie” had a boo-boo. His mom (my sister) told him that I did have a boo-boo, so he would have to be careful around my foot that day.

The next day I got to show him the tattoo and tell him that it wasn’t a boo-boo anymore, that it had healed and “now” it was a tattoo. From that conversation he developed this little “processing routine” that he would go through. Looking at my foot he would say something like this: “Aunt Minnie had boo-boo…boo-boo no more…all better…tattoo.” It was so cool to see him understand it all. And he also cracked me up because for the rest of my Easter break, whenever he would see me, he would lift up my pant leg...and somehow he always knew which heel to go for. He is just such a smarty!

But he did something just the other day that truly showed me what an influence I have had on him so far in his life.

I got to talk to him on the phone on Tuesday, and he said he was playing hockey…as usual! And that is one area where I may have rubbed off on the little guy—my love for hockey. But what struck me more was he brought up the subject of tattoos. We talked about how I have one, and he even asked about the new tattoo that I want to get in a couple months. Then he said something that made me honestly laugh in disbelief. He told me, “I am going to get a tattoo when I’m older.”

I have no clue if he has told my sister that yet, but I just could not believe that he would even think about that at three years old. And, granted, this isn’t entirely due to my influence. As I mentioned in my last post, Wyatt’s dad, Aaron, has a tattoo as well. Still, that phone conversation just reminded me of how children are like sponges. They take in what they hear, and they understand more than you think they would!

That also made me think of my own experience with tattoos, and how my earliest memory of a tattoo comes from when I was about four years old, like I said in my first post on this blog. And this past week I had a revelation about my early interest in tattoo: I realized that when I went to the dentist as a kid, I would almost always pick temporary tattoos over stickers when it came to getting my rewards for good check-ups.

It’s all just interesting to think about, that our beliefs and likes/dislikes begin to form at such young ages. I’ll be interested to see if Wyatt ever does get a tattoo and how much (if any) of these early memories he will remember.

I hope you all have enjoyed this, even though it is different from my typical posts. Have a great rest of the week, and I’ll see you back here soon!