The Evolving Atheist: A Review of Tattoos

Yes, all five have been posted somewhere on here…in fact all five were for previous Sinful Sunday posts. There were five tattoos on the Atheist Man… it seems no others lurking on this body anywhere else…but it is time for review.

So, for the first time in one place and in the correct timeline order and including a brief description of why and how they happened…

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2004…the, then, Pagan Boy sat in a tattoo artist’s chair for the first time.

This was supposed to be a shamrock on top of a maple leaf in honor of his Irish-Canadian heritage. The artist, however, drew a clover. The boy missed it as well. In fact it was his mother, of all people, who pointed it out to one evening at the dinner table.

October 6, 2004, the Pagan Boy again sat in the same artist’s chair.

On this one, please note the backwards S…after the clover incident mentioned above, a buddy pointed out that the artist “fucked this one up”. This statement brought panic and fear until the Pagan Boy Remembered using a mirror for this picture. The relief that washed relief over was palpable.

The A with the rose is for his eldest daughter (in 2013, she is now 14), originally drawn by her when she was four. The Superman crest was chosen by his youngest (soon-to-be 13) when she was three.

May 23, 2012 was the next time he visited a tattoo artist’s chair…unfortunately, not the same artist, however, as that parlor had closed. An eight year hiatus between tattoos does leave these possibilities as open.

The Atheist Man got this in honor of two things. His perfect birthday and my fandom of the work of Douglas.

This one was the hard to figure out…thus eight years…as he never quite knew how he wanted to do it. Then it seemed suddenly so simple once his own 42nd birthday approached.

Finally, as debuted just last week on Sinful Sunday, the Atheists Man’s fifth tattoo was done on October 29, 2013.

This one had been floating in his head for longer than the 42 above. It was the hardest and yet the most simple of all five so far.

One day while playing with logo ideas for his webpage the Darwin fish with a maple leaf came to mind…on a much more grandiose scale than this, but seeing the tattoo artist’s rendition of it just worked.

One interesting thing the artist said as she was applying the fifth…she mentioned just how well the colours in the others have held over the years. “These never see sun, do they?” she asked.

The Atheist Man responded, “I’m Irish, do you think I’m nuts?”

As the Atheist Man had prepared for the fifth tattoo he had stated it would be his last.

…however, after two weeks, he has another idea…and it seems Master Yoda says it best:

…and no, the sixth, seventh, eighth…nor however many there may be…will not be of Yoda.