The Tattoo

I didn't get a tattoo.   Let's just start this off with that so there is no confusion.   I'm not against tattoos.  People love them and they have deeply personal meanings to most people who get them.  I've just never had a what or a where on me that I wanted to put something permanently.  Perhaps someday I will.  This story is about a tattoo I saw on someone else.

From time to time, I have to mail things that require me to go to a package shipping store or the post office.   I've mailed all sorts of things but one of the most common things has been letters and creations from my daughter or packages that have a typewritten letter added in from my daughter.

The first time I brought something in it must have been unpackaged and when Ke'Von, the clerk at the store, saw it was in braille, he started up a conversation with me about my daughter and her learning braille.   He was personally fascinated in braille and although he had no specific place to apply his knowledge, he had taken it upon himself to begin learning braille online.

Since that time, whenever I drop a package off to be mailed with something my daughter has typed up, I'd show it to him and we talk about braille.   We'd talk about all sorts of other things too, like how it's important to have things tactile for my daughter so she can discern them.   A few weeks ago I mailed an anteater my daughter made out of bubble packing from an envelope, some string for a tongue, and lots of other tactile elements on the body.   He thought it was great.

Yesterday, I took another thing to be mailed to my parents which included a letter to them in braille and another creation my daughter had made with tactile stickers in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and types.   We talked about how she could tell some things but not others and what color meant to her.

Then Ke'Von said he had something he wondered if she'd be able to read.  He showed me his forearm, where he had a tattoo.  In the middle of the tattoo was his girlfriend, and mother of his children's name—in braille.    And here's the exciting part: he had the tattoo artist raise up the dots so the cells could be read just like regular braille would be.  He had matched the size so the characters were only slightly larger than a standard braille cell.

I've seen a lot of tattoos in my life, but that one word in braille has got to be one of my favorites.   I told my daughter about it and she and I are going to go and check it out when things with COVID-19 have settled down.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Terrible Driver Update:  The spaceship crashed.   Twice.  This means they've had to rebuild the spaceship fort twice already.   My daughter spent the night in the fort last night and they decided there needed to be more sleeping space for her brother which somehow involved not only crashing the spaceship but salvaging parts from other spaceships (blankets and pillows from around the house) resulting in version 3.0 of their fort.