Oops, this post’s image came out a little more legible than intended.  That’s a ‘Y’ if you happen to be confused 8^).  I was feeling a little bad having barraged you with so many wildlife photos as of late and decided to throw in a recent observation.  Linda and I were eating lunch at Lou’s Drive In.  For those who may not be familiar with this place, consider it a throwback to the old A&W establishment that you order curbside and your food is brought out to your car.  Whenever I go to Lou’s I remember the days in the distant past when Mom and Dad took us for root beer and hot dogs at an A&W’s in Springfield.   I also win points from Linda since she loves eating at Lou’s.  Ironically, we prefer to walk up and eat at the counter rather than stay in the car.

So, there we were sitting  and eating our hot dogs and root beer when a couple came up and sat down next to us.  The assumption was this was their first time here based on the difficulties they were having making up their minds on what to order.  They have a variety of offerings, but guessing some 90% of their customers order hot dogs and root beer…. okay, maybe more like 89%.  Eventually the counter waitress (they appear to only hire high school girls for this job by the way) tired of continually having to come back to them to ask what they wanted so simply stood there until they made a decision.  I can’t imagine the sheer terror one of them must go through when making a critical decision.  It was really this decision drama that drew my attention to them.  Wondering how this was going to play out (hamburger, no hot dog, no chicken fingers, wait hot dogs with fries… hamburger..), I noticed she had a tattoo.  Now, to know me is to know I am drawn to artistic and creative items and continually looking for inspiration for my own creative projects.  These projects are generally a self challenge to see if I can take a particular idea a little further or a new slant on an idea someone else may have already come up with.  Many fail, but every once in awhile, something makes it way on display.  Therefore, if you like art and have an affinity for observing people, tattoos are an irresistible magnet.  It is an entertaining activity to try and rationalize why an individual chose to get a tattoo in the first place and then what must have been going through their head when they selected that eternal mark.  Isn’t this really the intent of anyone with a visible tattoo anyway?

Back to the story at hand, the young woman (guessing 23-25) had a tattoo of a sun high on the back of her right shoulder.  Something seemed odd about it causing me to take a couple of looks at it before figuring it out.  The actual sun was pretty good (the post image was an attempt to provide a visual).  However, there seemed to be some cursive writing over it.  This was difficult to read since it was fairly light and looked like it was quickly done resulting in dots from the tattoo vibration instead of a smooth line.  Initial guess is the bottom word said Jeff and jumped to the conclusion it was a tribute to a loved one.  This turned out to be incorrect as the first word eventually came into focus.  This resulted in a slight internal flinch followed by a nudge to Linda to check out the tattoo (with a hint to read the words). Yeah, I lied, it wasn’t a ‘Y’.

I’ll never actually know the contributing variables that led to this decision or if there is a philosophical meaning for the image.  Whether she is a vampire with sun issues or a recovering melanoma victim, one thing is for sure, she leaves an interesting first impression.  The bet is she is fully aware of that.  I wonder if she spent the same amount of time deciding on fries as she did deciding on that permanent ink?  Just thought I would share and give you a break from the wildlife posts.  If you are curious, I whipped up that sun image freehand in about 15 minutes and thought it came out pretty good.  Anybody willing to let me try and tattoo something on them?  .. come on?  .. how about a stick fighter theater scene, nobody has one of those I bet!

By the way, extra blog points if you know the movie the title came from.