We were all young once: carefree, limitless, and stupid. The world seemed bright and we made choices without worrying whether we’d regret them. So yeah, in 2010, I made the quirky choice to get a mustache finger tattoo. And now I’m bearing the consequences of my actions: still having a mustache finger tattoo.
When I got a mustache finger tattoo at the peak of the ironic “hipster era” in 2010, the thought that I would now, twelve years later, still have that mustache finger tattoo didn’t even cross my mind.
“When you put your finger to your lip, it makes it look like you have a mustache!” my friends said. “This’ll be funny forever!”
How naïve we were…
The first six months of having my mustache finger tattoo were bliss. Everywhere I went, people noticed me. I was cool, I was hip, and when I went to shake someone’s hand, they’d go, “Oh, didn’t realize you were growing a mustache,” and we’d laugh and laugh and laugh. “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha was top of the charts. None of us were ever sad.
Things took a turn for the worse in 2016, when one of my friends asked if I was planning on getting the tattoo removed. “It’s a little ‘2010,’ don’t you think?” she said. Uh, is the work of Leonardo Da Vinci a little 1510? No! It’s timeless!
But by 2019, it was clear my friend was correct. I found myself featured on Instagram pages dedicated to spotting “noobs” in the wild. I lost my job because my boss assumed I couldn’t be trusted to have foresight. I tried desperately to get the tattoo removed, but it went too deep. It was a part of me now.
Do I regret my choice, like deeply deeply regret it to the point where I would kill my old self in order to have not gotten this tattoo, even if it meant my current self would also die? Yes. Did I have a second question? No.
For any of you contemplating getting a topical tattoo, please, heed my tale. Stick with the classics: maybe trees, a partner’s name, some characters in a language you do not speak. You’ll never regret those.
