Never Met a Stranger: Tattoos

By T. W. Burger

Tattoos have probably been around nearly as long as we’ve had skin.

I don’t have any particular problem with them, though I don’t have any tattoos of my own. I’ve got so much skin, I don’t need to draw attention to it. The Burger hide, tattooed, would too closely resemble a billboard.

In our culture, tattoos have stepped out of the shadowy world they formerly inhabited. Our association with them has usually been associated with rough characters, thugs, criminals and creatures of the night.

It wasn’t always so. For ages tattoos were symbols of power and magic, or totems of one’s tribe or religion. In some societies, this is still true. Tattoos were emblematic of the forces of nature, or of Heaven.

For whatever reasons tattoos seem to be caught in an updraft of respectability. Or maybe our standards are declining. Anyway, One sees a lot more of them around.

And, it seems, for less reason.

This bothers me. Personal adornment “just for pretty” is all well and good but should be left to the realm of clothing and jewelry. Tattoos are awfully permanent to be placed in the hands of whimsical fashion.

The other day, I was in a local fast food eatery. It was an odd hour and the place was not busy. The young man who waited on me had a set of tattoos on his forearms. The designs were bold, abstract, etched in a stark black. I found them interesting, not like the usual, hokey, comic-book stuff one usually sees.

I asked him what they were.

“Oh, they’re tribal tattoos,” he said, pleased.

Interesting, I thought. Tattoos that mean something.

“What tribe?” I asked, honestly interested.

Blank. “Huh?”

“You said they were tribal tattoos. I wondered what tribe? What do they represent?”

“Oh. I dunno. I got’em off a sheet at the tattoo parlor. They told me they were tribal tattoos.”

He gave a scornful look and went back to fiddling with the soda machine. I dropped the subject.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Like one of my other pet peeves, instant memorabilia. You know what I mean, those franchise-owned bars with tons of old photos and antique sports equipment on the walls. The paraphernalia were bought at auctions and yard sales. Nobody at the bar will have any idea whose images those photographs represent. Tinsel on a barren tree.

It is as though we are desperate to belong to something, to be ABOUT something, without going through the rigmarole of actually doing it.

If I ever get a tattoo, I think I’ll get one to look like the warning stencilled on packing crates: “Use No Hooks. This End Up.”

Hey, if I can’t be deep and spiritual, at least I can be handled with care.

 T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks and concrete mixers, has been an apprentice mortician and ambulance attendant.

Burger is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.