Tatooed

I have a tattoo on my arm that has been a work in progress. I think I had the first one done in about 2002. It was the same symbol that I later used as my company logo when I first went solo. It’s a design I came up with and I called it Jedex, after my two Boxers Jessie and Dexter. I had it infused with Reiki and consider it a good luck symbol. A few years later I decided to expand it slightly and Keith paid for it as a birthday present. We drew around it and filled my arm. I loved it. Last year I decided to do more, this time going up around my shoulder and down my arm so that the point of the tattoo peeks out the sleeve of a tee-shirt. My friends gave me money towards it as my birthday present. Jedex will always be the centre of the tattoo and the rest has been paid for by people I love, which means they are always with me (or on me?). I waited to have the tattoo extended because I knew I was due for a medical examination for Canada and they are strict. I didn’t want there to be any problems. And time passed, and before I knew it, it was time to leave South Africa. I finally went to the tattoo artist ten days before I was leaving, thinking that he could do the extension quickly. How wrong I was!

We drew the extension on a Saturday morning and the tattoo artist did the outline. Saturdays are really busy so he said I would have to come back to finish the rest. I thought that wasn’t a problem and tried to make an appointment for during the week. And then he said it…”you need 1 week for the outline to heal before I can continue”. “Nice”, I thought, “leave it till the very last minute”. I tried to convince him to finish it the following Friday, thinking that one day could not make that much of a difference but he wouldn’t budge. I had a friend’s 30th on the Saturday and I couldn’t miss it so I took the chance and make the appointment for the day before I was due to leave South Africa.

I arrived that morning at 9am and walked into a dark shop, a powerless shop, and one that would not have power for the rest of the day. My heart stopped. The tattoo outline had healed in three days; they could have finished it the previous week. Now I would be flying off to Canada with a tattoo and an outline and who knows when I would be able to have it finished, by someone I trusted. I called Keith in a panic and he suggested that he go down to the local tattoo artist in Parkhurst where we live and see if he could fit me in. The news was good, despite being fully booked for three weeks in advance; he had had a cancellation that morning and could see me at 3pm. I arrived in time, watched the boa constrictor for a while (all tattoo artists have boa’s in their parlours) and within half an hour the pen was happily buzzing against my skin. I was lucky that this artist had no problem finishing someone else’s work.

And then it happened. It happened half an hour into the tattoo, and with only half of the tattoo filled in…. the power went off! I could not believe what was happening to me.

It’s interesting, that the last straw for me in the decision to leave South Africa was the start of load shedding. It was one thing that I just could not handle. It was the thing that made up my mind. And it was the thing that bode me farewell.

We finished the tattoo the next morning and I flew off that night with a freshly tattooed arm, stinging all the way to Toronto.

What do you think?