I've always kinda hated the feel of wedding rings, and when my buddies started getting married and I tried on their rings for short amounts of time, that fact was confirmed for me. So I knew that getting a ring finger tattoo was always sort of the long-range plan for me. After the wedding, I wore my ring on the correct hand for a couple weeks, but being a lefty, I despised it. From then on, I wore it on my right hand, and just dealt with all the different connotations attached to that strategy. Everyone told me that I would eventually get used to having it on my finger, and to some extent I did, but it still bothered me more than an acceptable amount of time. Ipso facto, time to get the tattoo.
I thought it was going to hurt quite a bit, since a) it was my first tattoo; b) it was directly on the finger bone; and c) I'm a huge baby. I thought we might have to take a timeout at least once for me to call Mom, but the whole thing only took about four minutes, start to finish. So not only did it not hurt very much at all (it felt more like a small animal scratching me or something), I didn't even have time to bust out my impression of David Spade doing his impression of Michael J. Fox (2:55 mark of this video.)
And so ends the era of the UNITY ring. I love Rick James and Dave Chappelle and all, but I couldn't quite pull the trigger on getting my skin permanently imprinted with a throwaway joke from a 10-year-old comedy sketch-- to say nothing of what Teens would've allowed me to do. I got her on board (barely) with getting UNITY engraved in my ring; even if I wanted it, I have doubts I could've talked her into that tattoo.
Rapid-fire answers to FAQs:
- I'm not sure if this will be a 'gateway tattoo' or not. Since it was so quick, I didn't really get that adrenaline rush that tattoo junkies talk about. That being said, I'm not going to rule out a bunch of 'F.O.E.' ink in the future, in hopes of becoming the third Morris twin. Say it with me now: Family Over Everything.
- No, somehow this did not make my Dad proud of me. Apparently the tattoo needed to cover my shoulders and biceps, and more prominently feature American flags and/or bald eagles for him to be impressed. We discussed this on The Boards, and we decided that I need to stop half-assing things, or the old man will never give me my props. I start chewing...but only pouches. I get a tattoo....but only a small one on my ring finger. I take an animal's life....but only because the squirrel ran directly into my golf cart and I couldn't stop in time.
- I'm not anticipating this to be a problem, but if Teens and I are to get divorced someday...well, I've already got the C, the J, and the H....I'll just need to get creative and throw an R in there somewhere and then, boom, we've got RCJH. (Rock Chalk Jayhawk to the layperson.) The threat of changing my tattoo to this acronym is also what I'll be holding over Teens' head for the rest of our lives, so I expect the quality of her home-made dinners to be pretty, prettyyyyy superb from here on out.
F.O.E.
