Team Testosterone and I enjoyed our overnight at the waterpark in the Dells--we went down every waterslide, played basketball, raced down the body flume (which I dominated due to my weight advantage) and rode the roller coaster (my back is still sore from all the jolting and jarring). Getting away like that was a great relief. Plus, it's fun to just hang out with my kids and not be nagging at them to do their homework or clean up their junk.
While there, I was again amused by the prolific amount of body art--particularly on twentysomething men who seem to slap tattoos on their bodies in the same way my sons paste temporary tattoos on themselves. It's so random. One guy had a knife sketched on his love handle, a bottle of beer on his opposite shoulder, a heart on one arm, a miscellaneous Chinese character on his other arm, bands around his lower legs and a cross on his chest. But they were all really cheap looking, no color, blurry lines, shapes out of proportion.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate good body art. We saw a couple while on vacation this summer--both had the most detailed and intricate designs covering their entire torsos--like turtlenecks. The colors were vibrant, the work clearly planned out in advance, the precision quite professional. They looked artistic--amazing, really. But there's a world of difference between "good body art" and really pathetic, bleeding, fading ink jobs. What I saw in the Dells was cheap, and it seems a shame to inject that much bad black ink into one's skin without proper thought and planning. I mean, that's a painful decision to correct or erase! If you're going to adorn yourself permanently, I think you should put a little quality and consideration into it.
But one guy had me howling. He sported a seagull flying over waves on his one arm (in black, but not really black, more like dark navy--no color added), the requisite Chinese symbol on his other, a knife impaled on his right shin, some writing on his left. I floated behind him and his girlfriend down the lazy river, noting his attempt at growing facial hair (patchy) and wondering how much a substandard tattoo costs these days. Then their inner tube turned around and I saw the tattoo taking over his entire back. In letters 4 inches high, all caps, Gothic font, he'd asked someone to write "Lone Wolf." Below was a drawing of a wolf.
Which made me think of this, of course:
And I started to giggle. Alan Garner from The Hangover. 
Alan Garner: You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one. So there... there were two of us in the wolf pack... I was alone first in the pack, and then Doug joined in later. And six months ago, when Doug introduced me to you guys, I thought, "Wait a second, could it be?" And now I know for sure, I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast!
I wondered if his tattoo was intended to be ironic.
But the hands-down winner of "Most Regrettable Tattoo" belonged to the 18-year-old lifeguard who'd had "Kim + Nate 4Ever" written in cursive on her lower back. Yeah. She'll be asking someone to change that in the next couple years.
And speaking of wolves ... did you know they're related to dogs?
But that's a story for tomorrow, maybe.
Spill it, reader. Your funniest tattoo sighting.
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