Getting matching tattoos to officially announce an engagement, which I hear is quite the rage now among Navy couples, is probably a lot like buying naughahyde furniture.
Some people love the stuff. Other people absolutely hate it.
Does it really matter what the rest of us think? Some things in life – furniture and tattoos included – have to be left up to the individual. We’re talking about personal preferences here, pure and simple.
Jim and Tina, who seem to be an intelligent, tasteful, rather upstanding pair of soon-to-be-wed sailors on active duty, felt that getting matching tattoos to proclaim their intentions toward each other was exactly the thing to do.
They’ve both been married before and had gone the traditional engagement-ring route the first time around to signify the upcoming start of a whole new life. As the new non-traditionalists that they are, they’ve already decided to officially tie their knot tight on April Fool’s Day, so why shouldn’t their engagement be any less uniquely symbolic?
As we all know, rings are easily trashed. Naughahyde furniture is easily trashed. As for tattoos? I guess when you’re really, really sure that this is that one right person in the world you want to spend your life with, tattoos will last forever.
And as I’ve found out, they usually do.
When it comes to permanent body art, that tattoo you stick your flesh out for today will undoubtedly take you through this world and into the next.
Unless you absolutely, positively must get rid of it, at which point you’re looking at removal procedures. In a doctor’s office. For heftier fees than you paid to get it. But that depends, of course, on how elaborate the design was that you forked out all that cash to get in the first place.
The majority of people who have tattoos say, if you’re serious enough to get them, you’re probably willing to live with them for life, too.
Personally, I’d much rather drag a nice, blinding solitaire diamond around on my left hand to signify “forever,” but Tina insists that a love tattoo can actually be very bonding. In a uniquely-intimate kind of way.
She and Jim picked out matching horseshoes with a shamrock in the middle (because she’s from Kentucky and he’s half Irish, get it?), which ran $250 each to have embedded in both of their left thighs high above the knee. Everybody they know, including several other active-duty couples planning to follow suit, think it’s a romantically original way to seal the promise of a lifetime together.
People in the military have a thing for tattoos, and I have to admit, I’ve always thought they were really sexy, myself.
Tattoos, sexy? Sure. But then, Naughahyde furniture is considered comfortable to a number of people, too.
When you get right down to it on matters of personal preference, if engagement tattoos float Tina and Jim’s boat and other Navy couples like them as they embark on their own special voyage into matrimonial waters, what do the rest of us have to say about it anyway?
Not a doggone thing.
