The Telltale Tattoo: Burn this scary story into your kid's memory

When I was in Vietnam, my squad decided they would all get the same tattoo on their shoulders. Nothing cheesy. Just a tasteful pink Playboy bunny with a black bow tie, about the size of a 50-cent piece.

Normally I went along with about everything these guys did, mainly because I was forced to live with them in very close quarters and everyone was packing high-powered weapons. But I drew the line at getting a tattoo because of a terrible childhood experience.

As it turned out, if I had gotten a tattoo The Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston said she would have dropped me like a bad habit. She said she didn't date men with tattoos, so there was little chance of her ever marrying someone with one, even if the tattoo was a tasteful Playboy bunny.

I got turned off to tattoos when I was 16 years old and worked as a busboy at the Elks Club in Everett. The club had a bar with several bartenders. I thought these guys were pretty cool because they could make drinks, flirt with the waitresses and, when necessary, stick their lit cigarettes behind their ears as they whipped up a whiskey-sour and some fancy-pants drink with an umbrella on top.

There was one bartender named Don who was the coolest. He was a former Marine who served in Korea and now wore his hair in a style called a "waterfall" where it corkscrews over the forehead. He was always smoking and giving the waitresses a bad time. He called them "honey" and me "squirt." All in all, I thought he was so cool that I was willing to help him wash the dirty bar glasses at the end of the night, just to hang around with him.

One night we were washing glasses and talking and I told him that I thought I would like to get a tattoo some day. A couple of my low-life friends had made their own tattoos with regular needles and something called India ink, but those tattoos looked like something you would get in prison.

No, I told Don, I wanted a professional tattoo, maybe done by someone on First Avenue in Seattle. If Everett had a tattoo parlor, I wasn't aware of it. Besides, everything that was cool and slightly illegal could be found on First Avenue in Seattle, according to the lore around Everett High School.

Then Don stopped washing the bar glasses and rolled his white shirtsleeve over his elbow. "Take a look at this," he said, and put his arm in my face.

At first I thought he was showing me a large bruise. Maybe one of the waitresses got tired of him calling her "honey" and whacked him with a dinner plate. But on closer inspection, I realized I was looking at part of a tattoo. Well, at least it used to be a tattoo, but this particular tattoo had run like a watercolor painting.

"It used to be a globe with an eagle on it," Don said, letting me have a good look.

"Used to be" was a good choice of words because what used to be Earth was now a blurred blue ball that apparently ate the eagle. Don said over the years your skin stretches and sags, and tattoos stretch and sag right along with it.

What looks pretty good when you are 18 years old doesn't look so hot when you are 50. I carried that lesson in anatomy with me to Vietnam, so when my squad came back with pink bunnies on their shoulders, I didn't feel a bit jealous.

Now that most of those guys are in their 50s and older, I wonder if they roll up their sleeves to show their own kids a faded pink blob with a black stripe under it and tell them to go get their own tattoos. Or say, "Look what I did when I was your age."

That would be enough to stop any kid.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. His e-mail address is stevejonst@aol.com.