Monday, April 23, 2012

In Honor of Carnage Young

My friend, Carnage is a day older today.  He is easily amused and likes to read my blogs. As my followers know, I am writing a book, so I haven't posted any blogs lately. 

Since I have been staying in Florida for the past few months. I've had plenty of time to engage in one of
my favorite pastimes. People Watching!  I have also learned a few things that heretofore I was grossly unaware.  People love to talk about their grandchildren, pets and tattoos, not necessary in that order.
People are really funny about their tattoos. (not funny ha-ha, just funny odd).  Several years ago, I worked with a great man, who was in the 101st Airborne, went through jump training in Toccoa, (just like the mini-series 'Band of Brothers').  Everyone had to have their serial number tattooed on their arm. (the idea behind this was if they were shot out of the air and if bodies were laying all around, if the Army found the arm, with the serial number, the presumption would be that the ass had been blown away, and therefore, could notify the deceased family).  Jim said no precautions were taken, and the man who did his tattoo had an unfiltered Camel cigarette dangling from his mouth that was steadily dropping ashes on Jim's 19 year old flesh. Jim said he became airborne because the job paid $100 more monthly. He said that was like an additional $5,000 today. Jim went all the through war, served almost 4 1/2 years, and unlike most of his company, was able to come home to Alabama tattooed by unharmed.  Jim wanted to surprise his Mother and Dad. When he arrived back in the States, he booked a bus ticket and rode the Greyhound for the better part of 4 days to get home. He got off the bus, walked across the street to the gas station, saw an old friend, and caught a ride to his house. His mother, whom was called 'Baby' by everyone, including Jim, was entertaining her bridge club. Jim walked in the back door, the maid suggested Jim surprise Baby, so Jim walked into the living room, stood behind Baby's chair, everyone in the room saw Jim before Baby did. She turned around, saw Jim, looked him dead in the eye, and 'got the vapors' as middle age and older women in Alabama was prawn to do at that time, and fainted. When she came to, the first thing she did was apologize to the bridge club for Jim coming in 'all tattooed'. Jim said he explained the reasoning behind the tattoo, and Baby said well maybe they could take him to a Doctor up in Birmingham and have it erased.

 We all know the popularity of tattoos now, I spend alot of my time looking at them and asking people about their tattoos. Let me mention again, everyone wants to talk about their grandchildren, pets and  tattoos. I met a woman at a yard sale that had a clown holding balloons on her leg. Each balloon had the name and birth date of her grandchildren. From the looks of the tattoo, she must have had about 15 grand kids. I met another woman who had a small Scottie dog tattoo on her ankle, with the dog's name tattooed above the dog. Since I'm in an area where the population is 95% retired people, I find myself wondering does a coupon for 1/2 off on a tattoo come with their first social security check or with their first retirement check?

I often wonder about all of the young lovers who have each other's name tattoo-ed on their bodies. What happens if they break up, do they just have the names X-ed out, or a bigger tattoo put over it?
We met a nice man down at Disney World, who went through chemotherapy for cancer. When he had gone 5 years, cancer free, he decided to get a tattoo of the cancer ribbon about 6" in length on his leg. He had a reaction to the dye, picked up a staph infection, spent about a week in the hospital on high powered antibiotics and damn near lost his leg.

I met a young woman (about 20) who had an entire deck of cards tattoo-ed across her back. She told me she had almost $1,000 in the 'art work'. The down side to this story, she had really bad teeth. Wouldn't that money have been better spend on her teeth? Push come to shove, and somehow, it always does, you can always buy a deck of cards.

My favorite tattoo story comes from one of my new young friends I have met recently. She has a muffin, with the words 'Rusty Muffin' tattooed above her 'muffin'. I asked her, as she ages, will she go back and have 'rusted muffin' or possibly 'rusted out muffin' tattoo-ed? She is quite a sport and replied that she just wanted it known that the carpet and drapes matched. I guess everyone has figured out now that she has flaming red hair. 

I don't to appear to be judgemental. I find humor in just about everything. I also have a tattoo, I had my eyeliner tattooed on. It didn't hurt, I went to sleep while it was being done. My daughter went with me, she said I started to snore and she was very embarrassed. I get that alot of from children.

Happy Birthday Carnage, you are a great friend, from a wonderful family.

Stay tuned!