My Brothers Opinion / My Opinion


This is an exerpt from my dear brothers blog which I read often. His is the first entry and mine is the response (2nd entry).

I admire him so much and think all men should be like my brother. I would love to find a man as kind, intelligent, gentle, spritual, loving, handsome, a great father and husband and brother who is highly motivated, accomplished and he even has a wonderful sense of humor. I think he broke the mold.....


A day in the life...
Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Paradoxical Observation :

Tatoos everywhere

I'm in San Francisco for a conference and just got back from going out to dinner. I went to a Chevy's right down from my hotel. San Francisco is such an enchanting place this time of the year. The fog is hanging low and my hotel room on the 5th floor is right at the fog line. In the mornings it's at street level. It's also a bit chilly right now, just perfect for me. Probably in the 50 degree F range. So, I'm quite comfortable walking around with my usual shorts and polo shirt. Stopping at a street crossing, a gal came walking up from a different direction all bundled up with a scarf around her neck and a knee length coat on. I chuckled cuz she was so bundled up. There's steem coming up out of the manholes because of the difference in temperatures above ground vs. in the mantunnels, I guess. As we were standing there a slight breeze wafted the steam coming out of the manhole in our direction. The lady standing next to me started waving her hand around her face as if to avoid the steam like you would camp fire smoke. I'm normally pretty sensitive to smells etc. but was unaffected by it and wondered why she was being so melodramatic about a little bit of steam. Then I started thinking, maybe she's really ultra health conscious or something. Maybe she's just trying to avoid getting sick, or maybe she's like the divas get upset anytime someone so much as coughs around them. Either way, I thought how concerned she seemed for her health. Then as the walk light turned green, I happened to glance down at her stylish jack boots and noticed a tatoo running basically from her angle to her knee on the outside of her left leg.Later while in the restaurant, I overheard two college girls talking about where one of them should get a tatoo. The one said, "You should get it on the back of your neck. That way nobody will see it. Unless you hack off all your hair or something." Now, that confuses me. Why get a tatoo if you're going to try to hide it? They discussed other locations as well, like around her belly button and a few unmentinable locations. That's about the time I tuned out and started watching the kids on the other side of my table who had multiple piercings, multiple shades of purple, neon yellow and blue hair. Oh, and yes, they had tatoos as well...There's so much about this world that I really don't understand...
posted by Kirk at 9:17 PM

1 Comments:

Kat Chrisman said...

(I got a giggle out of this one)....Here's why:

I have a tiny,tiny tattoo on the small of my back, probably no bigger than a half inch in diameter. One pink heart with a smaller red heart off set inside the pink one. The pink heart is for Adam and the red heart is for Bret,(two sons who passed). They are, for me, symbolic and personl.I have my navel pierced also; I wear a small diamond inside,like an earring for my belly, very pretty and feminine. It doesn't seem a lot different to me than ear piercing....(makes me keep my tummy in shape too)!These things were done later in life with much contemplation, and I must admit-I love them and I'm happy I did it. It was difficult for me, however, to do something that society still has such a stigma about. I've always been one to worry so much about what others thought of me.Having revealed all this-I have to admit-I'm not a big fan of gaudy tattos in very conspicuous places on the body and facial piercing. I guess maybe I'm a bit of a hypocrite. Then again I don't understand why anyone would paint their house neon yellow or hot pink, or drive a truck jacked up 8 feet in the air, or a barbell mustache......or, well............I could go on and on.............beauty is in the eye of the beholder.........self expression and all that jazz.........some people love their self expression so much that they want to share it and say to the world "this pink house is who I am, not the neighbor next door whose house looks like two hundred other houses, and my mustache is the same kind that my great, great grandfather sported and he was a great, great man that I admired, or the huge tattoo on my breast of a flowering rose bud is symbolic of my coming into my own and taking charge of my life after surviving breast cancer."I actually asked them - why did she paint her house pink, and why the barbell mustache, and "pretty rose, but why on the chest?" Those were the answers that I got. My thought was, "how brave."I'm with a lot of folks in my generation that don't understand rap, pants that bag down below knees (looks like they're wearing a diaper with a heavy load), or lip piercing that make a person look like Frankenstein's long lost cousin. I will never paint my house pink, put a lift kit on any vehicle, mustache myself in any way (maybe my body will have a different opinion on this one). But with age and my own self evolution, independance and voyage into self expression, I've softened my view.

Love,

your sisterKat Chrisman

8:53 AM
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