So, a girl walks into a bar…
Okay, the girl was me. And it wasn’t a bar; it was a tattoo parlor.
Imagine the scene. It’s 2010, I’m 22 years old, and I had just got my first-ever tattoo only a week prior.
My objective? To get a full side tattoo of the serenity prayer.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference”
At this point in my life I definitely wasn’t religious; hell, I was barely even spiritual. But for some reason I really connected with the message of the prayer.
(And, if I’m being honest, I thought it would look badass if it was written out on my side in a nice script.)
But, something about learning to ‘accept the things’ I couldn’t change really resonated with me. Ironic for a person who has had a lifelong struggle with letting go of control? Maybe.
Back to the tattoo parlor scene.
I showed up to the parlor with my best friend, Talese, and took a few shots of Jager in the bathroom before the work began.
(I remember the day so clearly; we were planning to go to an 80’s costume party later that night. She was dressing up as Tom Cruise from Risky Business, and I was going as cone-bra Madonna. To this day, these are some of my fondest memories with Talese. Life was good.)
An easy 3 hours later, and I was checking out my new, shiny tattoo in the tattoo parlor mirror. Placement looks good? Check. Font on point? Check. Pictures for Facebook? Check.
Everything is awesome!
Fast forward to a week later…
I had a few minutes of downtime before heading into my job as a stock broker, so I was perusing my photos of the 80’s costume party. After scrolling through photos of an epic night that I barely remember, I came across some photos of my new tattoo…
Life was busy in those days, and I was working (and partying) a lot. As unusual as it may sound, this was the first time I really had a moment to look – actually LOOK – at my tattoo.
It was then that something caught my attention…
“OMG, I must be seeing things…
Surely there’s not an ‘a’ in the word ‘difference’!”
I did a double take.
Yet, when I looked back down at the picture of my new tattoo, there it was clear as day – an uninvited ‘a’ in a place where it definitely shouldn’t have been!
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the…differance!?”
I stared at the picture in horror.
Those horrifying seconds turned into what felt like minutes. And then…
I burst out laughing!
If getting a tattoo about acceptance wasn’t ironic before, it certainly was now. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that the wisdom of the serenity prayer would be giving me a return on investment so soon!
The way I saw it was that I had two choices: cry and wallow about this ridiculous tattoo that could not be undone, or just roll with the irony of the situation. I chose the latter.
I guess some people might also call this acceptance.
So, what happened with the tattoo?
Well, for starters I never heard the end of it from my friends. Something about the irony of someone who prides themselves on being educated getting a misspelled tattoo was highly comical. I don’t disagree.
Then, my tattoo picture ended up on FailBlog. (I’m not sure if this is still a thing, but it was big in 2010.) I never did find out who submitted my picture, but there were more than a few culprits.
Finally, I got the tattoo (somewhat) fixed by having the tattoo artist lift the ink out with water, and then go back over it with the letter that should have been there all along. But, to this day, it still doesn’t look right.
Amusingly, the process I went through upon discovering my misspelled tattoo perfectly parallels the advice given in the tattoo itself – Accepting things I can not change? Done. Changing the things I can? Done. Learning to know the difference? A resounding, yes.
Good one, Universe. I see what you did there.
Aside from the obvious lesson that tattoo guns don’t have spell check, the biggest lesson I learned here was that a bit of levity (even of the self-deprecating variety) can go a long way.
And, it’s a lesson that’s still paying dividends to this day.