Art, Food, Music, Nature, pets, Uncategorized, Weather

After the Ball Was Over

42 Comments

I scrubbed off all my temporary tattoos tonight. It’s official – the State Fair is over.

Most people I know don’t understand my love affair with the Great Minnesota Get Together and to be honest, it occasionally mystifies me a bit. But one of the things I do know is that I love getting temporary tattoos at the Fair.  I got nine this year over my four days of attendance –   3 from the airbrush tattoo guy, 2 from Kemps, 2 from the AG building, 1 from the lamb building and my favorite, one of the emerald ash borer.  There was a young man dressed up as an emerald ash borer at the DNR booth, trying to engage people about this new threat to ash trees and I felt sorry for him so I let him put his temporary tattoo alongside my others.

The airbrushed tattoos wear off the soonest (which is truly irritating, since they cost money) but over a week later, my free ones were still going strong. Every day last week I had to explain them at least twice a day to one or the other of my co-workers and today my book club members (my OTHER book club) wanted a full run down.  It’s been my way of extending the Fair – however tentatively.

But tonight when I was closing a couple of windows (because it’s been getting chilly at night) I realized that it’s time to let this year Fair go and start dreaming of next year.

Do you have a tattoo? If you were to get one, what would you get?

 

 

 

 

 

42 thoughts on “After the Ball Was Over”

  1. I don’t have a tatoo. I don’t think I could get one. I have sensitive skin that reacts badly to insect bites and shots, so I think a tatoo would spell disaster. I don’t even wear makeup. Daughter has a very small mountain range on her foot. Son has a large Hindu symbol on each shoulder.

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  2. I do not. I have a scar on my knee from a surgery that my daughter suggested could form a caterpillar. Riiiiiiight! Might as well be a butterfly. Nope. Were I ever to be drunk enough to get a tattoo, it would be a dragon. Caterpillar!! Ptah!

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  3. No tattoos for me either. Kelly has 2; both very small. Her first was a crescent moon and star on her foot. Then she got the word “Love” (in sort of cursive script) on the inside of her left wrist.
    I’m just not interested….

    It is interesting to understand the stories of some tattoos and the reasons for them.

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        1. OK. Back from the dog park . I dangled it long enough. As part of breast reconstruction, the plastic surgeons use tattoos to reproduce body parts.

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        2. You’ve got a man’s elbow tattooed on you??? I was thinking more of large twin Chinese lions in rainbow colors on your shoulder blades!!

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  5. In a funny turn of events, I just realized a few minutes ago that the spots where the temporary tattoos were on the longest I now have tan marks around them so it looks like I have some kind of funny splotchy skin poisoning.

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  6. There is an entire world of tasteless, poorly conceived tattoos. I was once at an Open Studio gathering (for art). A certain very indiscrete person attended, but not for long because she was disinvited after promoting her brand of Christianity, then revealing that her son had a tasteless tattoo that she felt driven to tell us about. In his groin area he had a tattoo that said “lucky you.”

    That revelation produced a long silence, then some choking sounds….what do you say to that?

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    2. Tattoos were once the province of sailors, ex-cons and street toughs. That association is not, obviously, going to carry forward with the next generation or two. I wonder if tattoos will continue to trend or if they will ultimately prove to be a fashion bubble that marks people of a certain age group (and those that wish they still were).

      I don’t have and would not have tattoos, but I am intrigued by them as a social phenomenon and I wonder why they have become so ubiquitous at this place in time. I haven’t read any speculative analyses, but I think tattoos have something to say about a person’s susceptibility to fad and fashion, about body image and image of self people want to project and think tattoos will help them project.

      It also says a lot about a young person’s inability to comprehend permanence, especially when you see tattoos that are topical now but will be meaningless in a couple of years. Body shapes can change over time, altering the tattoo’s presentation. There are going to be a lot of lumpy old people with ridiculously dynamic or puerile tattoos in a few decades.

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      1. Sometimes young people get a tattoo for other reasons, Bill. One of my daughters has a small bicycle tattoo on her ankle to remember a good friend from high school who was killed the September after graduation when a truck hit him while he was biking.

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  9. I do not, and don’t think I ever will. But it’s interesting that I have given it enough thought to know that if it did, it would be tiny and subtly located.

    It seems like everyone I know who is youngish has some kind of tattoo. Step son Mario has the head of a tiger on his left shoulder, and a head shot of each of his two dogs on his ankle & calf – they were his family when he went through rocky times. Joel had a character from a Grateful Dead album – Shakedown Street – on his right shoulder.

    I’ve known several members of one family who all got a tattooed image in honor of one of their clan who died.

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  10. My baby sister, who I probably shouldn’t call baby anymore as she is definitely a grown woman, has a very large tattoo on her back right shoulder of a tree of life and a full sleeve tattoo on her left arm … all Disney World themed in full color

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  12. My daughter has a friend with a tiny flower inked into her ankle. It is tiny because she knew her mother would go postal if she knew . . . which is just what happened. The mother roared, “Why did you do this to me?” Her daughter said, “Hard as it is for you to imagine, mother, I make some decisions without thinking what their impact will be on YOU.” Which was, at least in this case, a lie.

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      1. Have you ever seen the movie Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant? In an earlier scene the younger daughter plays and sings this song on the piano. It’s hysterical.

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  15. Sat outside lab at clinic. 11 people came through with bare arms, short sleeves. 5 had their arms covered in tattoos. Is there a connection? Tattoos are very common here. Is that the norm for
    MN? Is it because we have 3 colleges? At B& N I watch through magazine racks. Can see legs. about 15% of bare legs had tattoos l

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    2. It does seem like almost everyone of a certain age or younger does have a tattoo nowadays. Although I’m trying to remember if my other two daughters have any tattoos and I honestly can’t remember. I guess if they do have any, they must be small and unobtrusive. Or the fact that I don’t remember shows how very unobservant I am.

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