A butterfly, a peacock, and a sigh of relief

Boot camp liberty weekend in San Diego. I was literally a new recruit. Been in the navy 6 weeks. Head still nubby from the buzz cut. The lost look still in my eyes. Haven't been out of the barracks room for six weeks straight except to march to the chow hall, march to the medical clinic, or to march in circles on the grinder in an effort to "properly learn us to march". If you have ever been a member of one of the services, or if you are even a casual observer of the services, you already know that learning sailors to march is an ornerous and time consuming job, and then we forget. There, I said it. Squids are terrible marchers.

At the end of the sixth week they let us have a weekend of liberty. Of course, we didn't have anything but what they had given us, seeing as how we had had to box up and mail home everything we showed up with. Luckily, I had been warned, so I showed up in old jeans, a t shirt and flip flops that I just threw away. By way of supplies, I was clutching a paper bag containing a comb, toothbrush and tooth paste. I was young enough that a razor was not required.

So, obviously, our first stop on liberty weekend was the Exchange to buy some "civvies" to wear. And man, was I looking stylish because I was always one to choose the clothing to reflect my personal style by comparing price tags on all like items and buying whatever was cheapest. Only thing I would not buy was plaid pants, and I'm not sure, but if they were discounted enough I still might have.

Anyway, to make my point. On liberty weekend, the plan me and ol' Steve had was for me to get a tattoo. Because, as a newly minted sailor, I was supposed to have one. We had talked and planned and asked around. Word was that down on Broadway Street downtown there were quite a number of tattoo parlors to choose from. We were going to take a taxi Saturday morning down there. Steve joined up already sporting a number of tats, so he was going to help me find the best parlor, based on watching them work and also observing their cleanliness habits.

I had the whole "I want a tattoo" thing going on, but when we finally decided on where to get it done we found the flaw in my plan. I hadn't given any thought to exactly what I wanted. I looked at skulls and ships and girls and snakes and any manner of service related tough guys and such. I looked at tigers and leprechauns and any manner of bad ass cartoon dudes. But I kept having this vision in my head of getting old... and since I was 19, I was more or less thinking when I turned 30 or so... of trying to get a job and being turned down because of my tattoo of the devil dressed in navy cracker jacks with the words born to raise hell underneath on my flabby, wrinkly 30 year old arm. And I did not want that.

So I had narrowed it down to a gold fish with a long, flowing tail or a butterfly. I really wasn't too sure about the fish and had just about decided on the butterfly. I was walking up to tell the guy that I wanted it when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the peacock. It was nice and blue and had such a colorful tail. And right then I decided on it. And even though after a few years most of the colors faded out of it, I still like it.

And I was to later learn that a butterfly tattoo would not have served me very well for my travels through Asia. "Why?", you ask. I'll tell ya. From the PI to Thailand to anywhere else you might go, if you were a rounder... a playboy... a man with a wandering eye, then you were prone to butterfly. Yep. If you were trying to talk to a girl and she knew you were smooching another woman last night, well she'd just push you away. "What's the matter baby?", you'd ask. "Go away", she'd tell you, "you're a butterfly." It could be tough.

Therefore, like so many other big decisions in my life, I accidentally made the right choice.

I am back to working a traditional day shift for now. Hopefully blog time will be a little more regular.

In a frog's eye, out
Ramblin' Ed