"Cool, Dude"
I thought I had seen everything. I thought that there was nothing I might see on my street that would make me stop in my tracks and go, "Now, that's different".
You see, I live on Haight Street in San Francisco, the Ground Zero of the old "Hippie" area of the 1960's. This is a neighborhood where very little can be found that would pass for "normal" anywhere else.
What I saw that made me stop short was a sign in a shop window offering for sale magnetic metal jewelry that makes it look like the wearer has pierced his or her nose, tongue or sensitive nether region.
On Haight Street, where everything and everyone, no matter how blatantly bogus, demands to be taken seriously, here was a store proudly selling Genuine Illusion.
Who would buy this product? On Haight Street, where the truly deranged and the just plain stupid actually do cut holes in their bodies, this magnetic thingy must be aimed at a different market. It might be there for those folks who want to look moronic but are afraid to really commit to it. Perhaps it is aimed at the tourist who wants to go back to Arkansas and scare the living bejeezus out of Aunt Bea and Uncle Zeke.
Actually, the whole concept of body piercing is one I find intriguing. When asked, I have had pierced people tell me that it is considered beautiful and sacred in many cultures. True, but so is circumcision at puberty using a stone knife. And I thought that getting my driver's license was a right of passage.
If the young kids in my neighborhood are getting metal shafts jammed through their belly buttons to honor foreign tribal cultures does it then follow that in some remote village in Micronesia there are young people strutting around in Gap Khakis and Lee Press-On Nails?
I find it more likely that the kids are getting eyebrow rings simply because they know that it will frag off the Old Man and make Mama weep. Adolescents do that.
It's probably healthy. It makes the children separate themselves from the tribe to search out new territory. This alienation also probably goes to help prevent tribal inbreeding. What is worse: kids with pierced noses or kids with extra thumbs? Perhaps a really good anthropologist should explore this theory.
In my daily routine I deal with and have come to know several young people who have various things pierced. They are good people who work hard and are pleasantly tolerant of old geezers like me.
Recently, one of these kids suggested that I would look really cool if I got my lower lip pierced. I'm a guy who can't even pull off a Band-Aid without yelping and she wants me to let a perfect stranger paper-punch my face. Her comment was seriously given, so I felt obligated to give her a serious answer. I told her that "I can't control the body openings I have now, so I'm certainly not going to get any new ones". She seemed to accept that and said, "cool, dude". I like being called "dude". It's as close to a midlife crisis as I'm likely to get. I'm too Midwest.
Piercings are preferable to tattoos, I guess. The pain involved in a piercing is a onetime deal, not a three-hour needlefest. With piercings, the style choices are less confusing. Is the hole left to right or up and down? That's it.
The best thing in favor of getting pierced over getting tattooed is that, if you ever get tired of having a metal speed bump on your tongue you can (shudder) pull it out and it will heal up in short order.
I stopped into "Mother's Body Shop" on Haight Street to do some research. The rather pretty gal behind the counter with the tattooed python coiling around her long slender neck was very helpful. She informed me that "Mother's" was a "freeform" shop and that, although they had an in-house catalog of over 2000 designs to choose from, the customer was always right. If I was to walk in with a Polaroid snapshot of a pot roast dinner, they could tattoo it on my belly. No problem.
I asked the clerk/billboard, "Let's say, twenty years from now I decide that my tattoo wasn't such a good idea after all. How do I get rid of it?"
"Well, it would probably require Laser Surgery."
"Which would...?"
"Hurt like Hell."
She then asked me if I was interested in getting a tattoo. I told her that, at my age everything on my skin looks like a potential melanoma, so I don't want to provide it with any camouflage. "Cool, dude."
Piercings and tattoos are probably just a generational thing. In my youth we let our hair grow and wore tie-dye. Today they poke holes in their lips and get tattoos. Hair can be cut and clothing styles change. Piercings heal up and tattoos, well; they can be burned away. It's the person underneath the long hair or wearing the seven earrings that really matters. We've all done silly things and we survived. These kids will too.
Maybe I'll reconsider and get that tattoo. Something that speaks for me and my situation. I know, I'll get "Mom's Body Shop" to tattoo my tummy with:
"If found, please deposit in any mailbox. Return postage guaranteed."
