[Overpaid Slacker]

Dan -
It makes me laugh a little... (though I think there's not much trashier than tramp stamps, and that's reason 13,400,003 I would never want a girlchild).

I got the first one -- the large cross on my upper arm -- when I was 27 or so. Finally found an artist who "got" my idea, and he'd worked all over the world, Japan, etc., so I trusted him. I was living in NYC, and had come up to Syracuse to visit (Irish Catholic) mom.

I walk into the kitchen one morning, in a t-shirt (which usually just covers the bottom of the tat). Mom's sitting there, having coffee, and I reach down into the dishwasher to grab something, which evidently stretches the shirt sleeve enough so the bottom inch of the tat shows.

Mom pfffffffts out her coffee and says, in that plaintive, incredulous Irish Catholic mom voice "WHY, oh WHY, did you get a tattoo on your body?!!"

I deadpan -- "mom, where else would I get a tattoo?"

JP