I'm With The "In Crowd"

This piece first appeared in July 23rd, 2009 edition of the Pioneer Tribune, a weekly newspaper from Manistique, Michigan. Please visit their website: http://www.pioneertribune.com/

Part One

I have never been a person who follows the crowd. If I were a lemming, I’d be the one standing off to the side while the rest rush toward the cliff and the big swim that follows. As soon as the masses take interest in something that interests me, I abandon it. I was a big fan of NASCAR racing long before it became popular. I was a fan when the only televised race was the Daytona 500, and I kept up on the racing scene by reading car magazines. Stock car racing popularity seemed to “pop” overnight, and soon enough people were saying things like, “I’ve been a fan since way back, back when Jeff Gordon was a rookie.” That was my cue to bow out of race fan-dom, and I don’t miss it a bit.

There are some trends that are not so easy to dodge, though. I have become wrapped up in assorted forms of technology out of necessity and the practical application of that technology. MP3 players are wonderful, and I use mine with great frequency, but I don’t feel the need to dress my player up by changing its “skin.” Technology as a fashion accessory is for the crowd, and the crowd makes me sick.

Some trends kind of sneak up and get you before it’s too late to get out. It nearly happened to me.

Cue the flashback sequence:

I was fresh out of high school in the mid ’80s and was at an age where I was really discovering just how independent of the crowd I was. I wanted to do something that no one else was doing, something that would really make me stand out in the crowd. I had made up my mind that I wanted to get a tattoo. I wanted to get an eagle with a banner in its claws that read “liberty or death,” paraphrasing the immortal words of Patrick Henry, on my upper right arm. I didn’t want anything too radical, but at the time almost any tattoo was radical. The only people getting them were sailors on shore leave and bikers. My tattoo would let the world know that they should get out of my way because I meant business.

Paul was a co-worker of mine and a great friend. I mentioned to him that I was planning on getting a tattoo. He informed me that he needed to get a tattoo changed; he was engaged to be married, but not to the girl whose name was permanently installed on his arm. He said that we should go to a tattoo parlor together and save some gas money. Back then, there weren’t tattoo parlors on every block. Most likely the only place we could have gotten a tattoo at that time was at the Marquette County Jail. Getting a tattoo meant a road trip.

We knew that the nearest place to have the work done would probably be Green Bay, Wisconsin. Paul’s future mother-in-law lived just north of Menominee, Michigan, just about an hour out of Green Bay, Iit was decided that we could drive there after work one evening, spend the night, and then continue from there to Green Bay the next morning to find a parlor.

At the home of Paul’s mom-in-law-to-be we settled in for the evening by drinking a lot of beer. I think it was the first time in my life that I was actually comfortable in the home of a stranger. I think the nobility of the mission at hand did much to put my mind at ease about my surroundings. I was about to get a tattoo, after all. Spending the night here was a necessary part of the process.

The next day we woke at a somewhat reasonable time and started out for Green Bay. We didn’t bother to try and find a tattoo parlor before striking out on the road because we knew that there was no choice, we had to find one. Paul could not get married to Chris with his body bearing the name of a woman who was not Chris. We didn’t even know if Green Bay had a parlor.

I was equally ignorant as to how much a tattoo cost. I had 100 bucks in my pocket that was earmarked for the tattoo. I figured that I would get the biggest eagle that C note would buy, even if 100 bucks would only buy an un-hatched, eagle egg tattoo.

To be continued...