My friend Candy and I decided on my eighteenth birthday, that we were going to go and get a tattoo in honor of our adulthood. Candy knew exactly what kind of tattoo she wanted, but I was undecided. Tigger had been her favorite character for ever, and she wanted to be reminded of him permanently. I somehow didn’t believe that a child-like image of Tigger was the correct way to celebrate adulthood, but hey, that’s Candy! I wanted to make sure that if I was going to be permanently marked for life, it had to be by something meaningful. I didn’t know what, but maybe something that said “this is me”. We arrived at our local tattoo parlor an hour early, to look through the tattoo books, there were stacks, and I was hoping that by searching the tattoo books I would find what I wanted.

The first tattoo books I looked through had some really horrific artwork in them, no matter how cleverly disguised as art, these were not for me, and I started to get worried. I was looking for a smallish, feminine tattoo that I could confidently wear on my ankle and would represent who I am. I was concerned that I would not find anything in the tattoo books at the parlor.

I looked through a number of tattoo books in the first half hour and found some of them ugly and some really beautiful, but none that said “this is you”, or leapt out from the page at me. At this point in time I was becoming concerned and one of the tattoo artists saw this. He came over to me with another armful of tattoo books and I thought, oh no, not more! But after asking me a few questions about what I liked and who I am, he went through the tattoo books until he felt he had the right one, opened it and pointed at the perfect tattoo for me.

When he showed me the picture of the small dolphin, depicted in all the colors of the rainbow, I was ecstatic. I loved dolphins, in fact they were my favorite animal, I loved the ocean and I was an artist so the rainbow colors were really me. Finally all those tattoo books had yielded something that was just right for me. My perfect tattoo!

Last weekend, I helped another friend of mine look through tattoo books for something that would be perfect for her. She had the same pains of finding something that I’d had. After she’d found what she wanted, I sat there and glanced through the tattoo books for the sole purpose of passing time. In the very first of the tattoo books that I opened, I smiled. Here we go again! My friend and I walked out of the tattoo parlor a few hours later, with smiles on both of our faces. If you’re planning on getting a tattoo, consider yourself warned, sometimes those stacks of tattoo books can be rather addictive.