Quote: (05-31-2017 02:58 PM)YoungBlade Wrote:
Scars are tattoos with cooler stories. If I do something worth remembering that didn't mark me, then I'll get one.
Absolutely. Nowadays if you meet a German dude with a facial scar, there's a good chance he got it from
academic fencing. It's an old tradition going back a few hundred years, but the short story is they get these scars deliberately through fencing competitions with sharp blades. There's also a much better than average chance he's not a guilt-ridden closeted homosexual that unfortunately too many German men became in the decades since the end of WW2. If only one of those guys were elected in place of Angela Merkel, alas, it's not to be.
As for tats, growing up I always thought if I ever joined the military, then I could see getting one. It wasn't until after I joined the military that i realized most of the guys with tattoos got them when they were young and stupid right out of basic training. A lot of the older guys wish they never had them, but that's changed a bit with the sleeve fad as well as more permissive regulations allowing sleeves and in some cases neck and hand tattoos.
In the early nineties I knew a legal secretary who had a barbed wire tattoo around her right wrist - that was very controversial for back then and she often had to hide it with a few bracelets. Her boss wasn't sure what to make of it, but tats were an easy way to tell if a girl was more likely DTF. Even an ankle tattoo was as good an indicator as big hooped earrings and a choker collar. Once tramp stamps came along, hell, might as well be a bulls eye, right?
But now tats are so ubiquitous on younger people. Even sleeve tats are way more common than I would ever have imagined, usually accompanied by some stupid gauging/self mutilation done to the ears. I agree with a previous poster about the presence of tats having more to do with fair trade coffee connoisseurs and slam poetry aficionados than anything remotely badass.
I stand out more by NOT having any tattoos - glad I never bothered.