tattoo

I saw that a Facebook friend had posted a new picture of herself with her new tattoo, and it got me to thinking again about whether I should get an American flag tattoo. (The answer is still NO NO NO NO.) So I Googled "should I get a tattoo?" and one of the first hits was this, a website from the Jehovah's Witnesses advising youth that "If you are a Christian, you would certainly not want to make markings on your body—even temporarily—that smack of paganism or false worship." Teehee.

I think I've mentioned it before but I'll just say it again. So I used to be pretty devoutly Jehovah's Witness, when I was much, much younger. They roped my parents when they first moved to America, and I got stuck attending weekly Kingdom Hall sessions and having a Japanese-American woman named Bernice come to my house every Wednesday after school to eat strawberry-flavored snack wafers and teach me and a dull girl named April Lopez lessons out of the New World Translation of the Bible. That's the Jehovah's Witness version of the Bible, though I haven't paid close enough attention to figure out how that's different from the NRSV. I didn't like our sessions because all we did was read passages aloud, and April read very slowly, and I was impatient. April was a very girly little nine year-old. When Bernice said things like, "What's a different word for 'mankind' that doesn't talk only about men?" April would blanch, and then a minute later say, "Ummmm...'peoplekind'?" with an upturning inflection. And I would sigh heavily and say, "Humankind." I was a little tomboy bitch.

The Jehovah's Witnesses produce books for teens and preteens, since the New World Translation is a little opaque. My house was filled with these embossed hardcovers, and I was a hungry young reader so I read all of them. My favorite was a palm-sized sky blue book called "Young People Ask," which was designed for a teen audience. It introduced me to such concepts as homosexuality (illustrated by two topless men wearing Chippendales bowties embracing) and masturbation (illustrated by a teen boy kneeling at his bedside in prayer, asking Jehovah for the strength to resist the solitary vice). The chapter on the latter was so euphemistic that I could not divine what the vice entailed and for years afterward thought that "masturbation" was just a Jehovah's Witness's way of saying "selfishness." Resist selfishness: who could argue with that?

Anyway, happening upon the Jehovah's Witness's tattoo advice brought me back to those simpler days. I particularly liked the photographs accompanying the article.

This photograph says: if you get a tattoo, you not only have terrifyingly bad style (and a future filled with muscle shirts, eyeliner, crumpled felt trilbies) but you are also a gaywad and you like feeling a man's bristles against the sensitive part of your flabby shoulder.



This photograph says: "[Bananarchist], your cruel thin mother and Margaret Cho will revile you for the black blob you injudiciously decided to tattoo on the back of your hand. And then you will soak your shoulder pads with tears."

This article moved me closer to getting an American flag tattoo on my hand.