Ben Facey | Ink’d

Currently my body is ink-free, but I soon plan on changing that. I want a tattoo and have promised three different friends that I would get a tattoo with them in the next few months. Statistically, at least one of them won’t chicken out, so it’s very likely that within the next few months my ink virginity will be taken from me.

The question is, what tattoo should I get?

I have thought about getting a tattoo for years, although the idea started coming to fruition in the last few months. My ideas jumped around from the Triforce from the Legend of Zelda, to a biblical verse (I go to church), to something from "To Kill A Mockingbird," to something space related (I just might become the first English major astronaut), or maybe even something super abstract because I’m a hipster wannabe.

But at the moment none of these ideas sound very attractive to me for something stamped on my body forever. Maybe the question isn’t what tattoo should I get, but why I want a tattoo in the first place.

I’ll spare you the details of my emotional soul searching and take you right to the answer. I want one because I am scared. I realize how bizarre that sounds. Yes, most people are scared to get tattoos, but I want one because I am scared. I am terrified, and always have been, of changing. I am afraid that the person I will become will be unrecognizable and unattractive to the person I am now.

When I was 14, I had big dreams of becoming a novelist. I always, probably in delusion, thought I was a good writer and so that became my dream. All well and good, but there was a catch! I had to finish my first book by the time I turned 18.

I remember quite vividly wanting this because I was afraid that adult me would be a completely different person than current me. He wouldn’t be able to feel the way I felt or write in just the same way I did. I wanted that book to be me, not some guy 10 years from now. Needless to say, for a variety of reasons, I did not write that book and thank God because it would have been terrible.

I wanted tattoos from a book, a video game, a hobby I currently have to force future me to remember past and current me. I want it to be a permanent reminder of who I am at this very moment. Of what I love, what I care for and what I’m feeling now.

This is a terrible, terrible, terrible reason to get a tattoo or do anything for that matter. People change, that’s life, but they never change completely. I still love video games and cartoons and Harper Lee. I still have the same mannerisms and sense of humor, but I have grown up, and this is a very good thing. I am a better, smarter, more well-adjusted human being than I have ever been in my life.

If I wrote a book now it would still be by me and without a doubt would be light years better than anything I would have scribbled together when I was in ninth grade. And if I write a book when I’m 30, it will probably be better than anything I could write now. Current me is different than past me, but in good ways. I still have all the great defining qualities that I had when I was younger but experiences to go with them.

Look, this is not me bashing tattoos; I am still probably going to get one in the next couple months. This is me saying be wary about getting one to remember who you were. The best parts of you, the things that matter, the things that are important — they stay with you as you mature and grow up; everything else was probably forgotten for a reason. 

Ben Facey is a College sophomore from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, studying English. His email address is bfacey@sas.upenn.edu “At Face Value” usually appears every other Monday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.