Tattoo You

Author’s Note: Hanukkah is upon us and I think it only fitting to mention that my son Nick doesn’t have a prayer of being buried in a Jewish cemetery.  Paging Larry David…

Every year when flu seasons rolls around, I invariably ask my son, “Did you get a flu shot?”  And every year he invariably winces, instictively recoils, and flatly declares, “Dude. You know I’m needle-phobic.”

Yeah, I know.

Then how do you explain that prison tat on his calf (a crude baby with a screw through its eye done by a fellow “inmate” at his boarding school) something Native American inked on his shoulder, and down his arm,  an entire “sleeve” of pine green- a tribute to the rugged glory of the Colorado national forests?

(I’m not exactly sure which arm because when he proudly unveiled it, I nearly fainted.  I’ve never asked for an encore.)

Wassup with that?

Remember when we were teenagers and we horrified our parents with pierced ears, long hair, side burns, mustaches, bleached blue jeans, cut-offs, extra-wide bell bottoms, mini skirts?  In 1967, I vowed to stay cutting-edge, fashion forward and to never trust anyone over thirty’s dress code.

I knew that I would beat the odds and stay forever young, forever in blue jeans, forever hip and forever relevant. And I knew that I would never visit any fuddy-duddy, old fogey beliefs on my offspring.

They would live free; that very freedom forged by my own peer group’s struggle with the generation gap.  I fought the good fight so that my children could someday express themselves in any way they saw fit.  And I promised that I would always be okay with all their decisions.

OMG! and WTF!  How stupid, unsuspecting, naive, idiotic was I?  I never realized that it is every new generation’s sacred mandate to up the ante and stick it to the older one where the sun don’t shine.  (Like in the Colorado national forests.)

To be fair, my daughter Natasha never rebelled by way of her clothing.

Conservative by nature and reinforced by boarding school, I never saw her in anything that wasn’t navy blue, forest green, or khaki.  (Sometimes she would go totally crazy and maroon or gray might make an appearance in her William F. Buckley-approved closet.)

But she does have pierced ears.  When she was in first grade, I myself had taken her to get them done.

I hadn’t planned it.  It was just a go-to response when yet-another bad haircut robbed her of what little hair she was born with in the first place.

(Sidebar: I had tons of hair so I always knew that any offspring I eventually had would be blessed with luxuriant locks.  Wrong again.  Both my kids inherited the “bad hair” gene from their father. You could almost see them thinking.  So much for the domination of the “strong over the weak”  theory.  Thanks a lot, Gregor Mendel.)

She looked so pathetic with this moth-eaten pixie cut that I asked her if she wanted to get her ears pierced- now that you could see them.

Natasha eagerly assented and we immediately drove over to Claire’s Boutique, home to millions of earpiercings nationwide.  The gal with the stud gun explained what she was going to do.  Natasha bravely agreed but clasped my hand for support.

Boom!  The first earring shot into her ear lobe.   But before the tech had time to reload, I found myself holding onto a limp body.

It hadn’t hurt her but the noise had startled her and she passed right out.  I grabbed her to keep her from hitting the floor.  And when she came to she still needed the other ear done.

She bravely agreed to another go and no, she didn’t pass out- then.  As I was paying at the register, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her start to sag.  I whirled around and made a Ron Swoboda shoestring catch.

I did not want a repeat performance from my son.

And besides, he had no real earlobes. (I pointed this defect out every time he toyed with the idea.)  And it wasn’t too hard to dissuade him.  He hated the thought of needles and he repeatedly assured me that he wouldn’t be going to Claire’s Boutique any time soon.

I rested easy. Ha!  It was just a plot to throw me off the scent.  He had much bigger fish to fry.

(Second sidebar: Along with the “bad hair gene,” their dashing father had also passed on the “peacock” gene.  If Natasha was the plainer, littler pea hen, then Nick had been endowed with all the instincts of the rampant male of the species.)

First, when he was thirteen, Nick dyed his hair Nedlog neon-orange.  Awful, but not permanent and besides, as he pointed out with Beavis-like glee, “Chicks dig it!”

And then there were some interesting expressions vis–a–vis his clothing.  Although he, too, had attended the same prep school as Natasha, my son manipulated its stuffy dress code to the breaking point.

Sports jacket, tie and khakis were required-wearing.  But Nick had ditched all his J. Press approved garb the minute he hit Newport.  He found a local thrift store and loaded up on zoot suits, ratty old tweed blazers, cast-off vests and mildewed sports jackets in colors like dried Zingerman’s mustard and Exorcist pea green.

And he bought one Mickey Mouse tie that he slip-knotted over his head every school day for two years.

(By the way, this up-the-establishment way of dress has stuck with him ever since.  His clothes may have improved enormously since boarding school days, but once that Mickey Mouse tie- in every sense of the phrase- was off, it was off.

Today Nick’s in the tech industry, and at thirty-two, the eminence grisé of his firm.  And  he has never again had to put on a tie.  A major part of his job requirement.)

(Third sidebar: Nick has also mentioned to me, on more than one occasion, that if he ever finds the guy who invented “preppie,” he is going to kill him.  Hey, does anybody know a good defense attorney?)

I never even thought to put out a zero tolerance policy on tattoos.  Nick hated getting shots.  He was violently needle-phobic, just as I had been as a kid.  Nick would never, ever, ever get a tattoo.  If there was one thing I was absolutely sure of, it was this.  ALL my mother’s intuition told me I didn’t have to worry.  I would have bet the farm.

So here I am today farm-less.  Somehow Nick conquered his fear and looks like just the kind of bro Queequeg would be proud to hang with.

Well, it could have been worse, I suppose.  Nick could have gotten the earrings and Natasha the tattoos.

I guess I’m going to have to take a trip back to the sixties and mellow out.

Peace, brothers and sisters.  Or should I say mothers and fathers?