Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Tat-complishments! Accomplishtoos? Whatever...

As previously stated, I got my swallow tattoos, a traditional sailor tattoo.  Each swallow represents 5,000 nautical miles of sea travel (two is the maximum).  Once a sailor gives up the sea life forever, many of them add ropes in the swallows' beaks, attached to the one thing they missed the most while they were at sea.  Since I plan to be at sea for at least a little while longer, I haven't completed the tattoo, but I plan to!
Anyway, I ran into my drunk friend at a party the other night, and he told me about another of his friends who had hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, and, to commemorate the accomplishment, got a tattoo of a map of the trail done on the bottom of their foot.
Now, I don't think a tattoo on the bottom of the foot is necessarily the best idea, because it would fade very quickly, but I just liked the idea of it.
Sometime between that meeting with my friend and this moment, I had a random thought.
Swallows for sea travel and a map of the Appalachian Trail for the journey?  These are trophy tattoos!  They're like a certificate saying "yeah, I totally did this and I'll never regret it."
Are there more like this?

I was quickly able to find other accomplishment tattoos... for sailors, though.  A Golden Dragon for crossing the international date line, an anchor for crossing the Atlantic, etc.  What about everyone else?  Tattoos are a very sailorish thing, but I know that many non-sailors get tattoos.
So I decided I'm going to try to create a list of ideas for accomplishment tattoos--please feel free to help me out!  If you or someone you know has their own "accomplishment tattoo," let me know about it, or if you just have an idea, leave it here in a comment!
Things like saving a life, living through a natural disaster, beating a very bad illness, going into space, climbing a ridiculous mountain, etc.  Anything!  The smallest accomplishments to the largest one.
Oh, just so I don't leave you hanging, here you go:



One is holding a gear, and one is holding a cog, symbolizing that I spent a lot of time as both a deck hand AND as an engineer (still am!).  Since this is a very popular traditional tattoo, I decided to give it that personal twist.
Anywho, I'll write again soon!  See ya!

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