Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Things I Didn't Expect to See When I was Twenty


Stem to stern tattoos! What about you?
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23 comments:

R. T. said...

I have two curmudgeonly complaints about the brave new world of the 21st century: tattoos and cell-phones (both ubiquitous and both unpleasant distractions). Postscript: You can include piercings with tattoos are equally annoying distortions of the body's reality. (Well, I warned you. These are curmudgeonly, aren't they?)

11:17 PM
the walking man said...

In my 20's I never thought that the "hippie" generation would take the world to the corporacracy based consumerist society and all that it has wrought.

I do sort of like prodding the overly tattooed though. "hey dude you made your choice to be a museum wall, kinda hard to de-acquisition the "art" now isn't it."

4:50 AM
Randy Johnson said...

On a serious note, at that naive age of twenty, I never expected to see all this racist BS still going on. That should have been put behind us long ago.
As I said, I was very naive.

6:26 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Randy-We thought everything would improve-how dumb could we be.
I feel like telling these young girls, you don't want to be putting tattoos on your upper arms unless they'll look good swinging. Perhaps monkeys.

8:31 AM
Tribe said...

When I was young and twenty, I never expected the Cleveland Indians to win a World Series....and some things just never change.

8:36 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I won't even go into the Detroit Lions.

8:40 AM
Corey Wilde said...

At twenty I never thought I could look at a tattoo with anything but disgust.

And I was right.

8:54 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Cell phones I can take-but not in cars, movies, trains, coffee shops, airports. Well, maybe I can't take them either.

9:05 AM
Deb said...

Woman of a certain age makes a prediction: As the tattoo'd generation moves into middle age, tattoo removal services will become a cottage industry.

Come back in 20 years and see if I'm right.

9:16 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I bet it hurts more than putting them on.

9:39 AM
Charles Gramlich said...

I don't pay much attention to tats.

9:44 AM
Randy Johnson said...

I just remembered watching some game show years back that had celebrity couples. Orson Bean and his wife were asked if either had tatoos. The wife said she'd gotten a rose on one breast when young and over the years it had become a long-stemmed rose.
I think some of these young people may have similar tales as they age and their bodies mature.

9:44 AM
Deb said...

Yes! The game show was "Tattle Tales" and I remember that exact answer about the long-stem rose! I guess we're all people of "a certain age" together here. (BTW, I don't think Orson Bean is still married to the same woman. The last I remember, he was married to the woman who played the mom--maybe--on The Wonder Years.)

11:08 AM
Todd Mason said...

As someone whose skin is prone to all sorts of ailment, is a needle-phobe, and who has never been the most conformist sort, the ubiquity of tattooing these days is as ridiculous to me as the practice itself is uglifying...even handsome tats don't really look good on bodies. Body-painting and henna, sure...one is not actually painfully disfiguring one's self (we can hope...Michael Chiklis has a story about how one can do so with foolish makeup choices).

I never expected to see...hm...let me think. I'm not too easily flabbergasted. However, various sorts of Chauvinism are actually less Easily OK than they used to be, and that is an improvement. Less engagement with civic society is a bad thing in many ways, but less naive engagement with civic society is all to the good ("If only we march one more time, everyone will love everybody! We will be able to fix everything with the right party in power!").

11:12 AM
sandra seamans said...

The hardest part for me with tatoos is I'm so busy looking at them, I ignore the person who's wearing them. Multiple body piercings has the same effect.

12:46 PM
Iren said...

as someone with a tattoo (which I designed and which means something to me)I am disgusted at number of trend tattoos that I have seen over the years. People getting them because everyone else is.

I never expected there to still be subcultures where bathing was a sign of selling out, the left to get further left and the right to get further right--- and of course I never expected the gray ceiling, baby doomer culture war, and a generation ahead of me that has no intention of growing up and passing on reins of power to anyone but their kids to last as long as they have.
On the plus side I am hearing more and more Baby Boomers that are starting to see what they have wrought.

12:50 PM
Rob Kitchin said...

At twenty, I didn't expect to see a black president any time soon. I didn't expect Ireland to boom (and then bust). I didn't think The Rolling Stones could keep going for much longer. I didn't expect we'd be communicating through this medium. And I didn't think I'd weight twice as much and have lost my hair twenty years after I was twenty! Oh, and if someone wants a tattoo, that's fine by me - it has no effect on my life (or in fact pretty much nobody else's).

1:28 PM
Dana King said...

This is a non sequitur as far as this thread is concerned, but Scott Phillips (THE ICE HARVEST, COTTONWOOD) has a rousing endorsement of Megan's BURY ME DEEP over at his blog, Pocketful of Ginch.

1:55 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

I didn't expect to be doing this every day. That's for sure. And as a consequence, I didn't expect to read less books or buy more.

2:20 PM
Chuck said...

In my mid 20's, Captain Kirk used his flip open communicator to talk with Spock, Scotty and Bones. I never thought that I would be using one. Now if only we could develop warp speed.

8:16 PM
Barbara Martin said...

Tatoos were like forbidden fruit when I was twenty. Only bikers and cons had them.

3:42 PM
Chad said...

Well, to respond to the tattoo thing. I have them. And my wife does too. Tattoos don't bother me. They don't have to look like crap as you age, if you get them touched up (which you should do anyway if your tattoo has color). What does bother me about tattoos is people who have flash. (That's the stuff that hangs on the wall in every tattoo shop and that 100 other people picked out and have before you).

I and my wife don't regret any of our tattoos. People who put some thought into them don't either. In my experience, it's the people who pick flash off the wall, the girls who get the tramp stamp, and reformed gangbangers who regret their tattoos.

But as for what I never expected to see when I was 20:

--Cell phones everywhere
--MTV not showing videos
--Network tv having virtually no programming but reality/ talent shows
--A Black President

11:37 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Chad-I don't object to tattoos; it just surprised me. But as the skin sags and it does, it has to effect more than the color, I imagine. My son-in-law as a bunch of them.
There is nothing more annoying than being with someone who is constantly checking their cellphone. That does bother me.

8:28 AM

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