It wasn’t licked on by kittens.

My wife makes me laugh.

Yesterday, she finally went to get her memorial tattoo (pic on her blog). It turned out really nice and I was actually surprised at how good the tattooist was. Most tattoo places I've been to before offer one of two things, a cookie-cutter design off the wall, or a custom design that takes multiple visits and costs an absolute fuck ton.

At this place (Monster Ink in Greenville), Sunny went in with a design she found online and told them that was the basic concept, but she wanted a few things changed. They drew up the new design in about fifteen minutes and it was almost exactly what I had in my head when Sunny and I discussed the changes she wanted the day before.

I watched Sunny getting the tattoo and I can honestly say was really proud of her. I got a tattoo myself when I was 18, and I can tell you, they're not the most comfortable things in the world to have done. Knowing my missus very well, I knew that if she actually made it into the tattoo parlor and then actually made it into the chair, she wouldn't chicken out or ask to stop halfway through. However, she went one step further and throughout the whole thing she didn't make a noise, ask for a break or make any fuss whatsoever. I could tell by her face she was obviously in pain, but I've seen and heard her make way more fuss over a stubbed toe or a cut finger.

So, on the way home I asked her what her next one would be (it's my honest belief that tattoos are addictive) and totally seriously, without a hint of pretence she turned to me and said:

"I'm not getting another one. That was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life."

So, I laughed, then explained that in a few days, when the pain was just a memory and the healing itchiness had gone away, she'd look at it in the mirror and decide she wanted another one.

This was when she turned to me and said… and I quote:

"I'm not getting another one. It hurt worse than childbirth."

If that tattoo hurt worse than childbirth, when she was in labor, she must have been sitting up in bed, reading a magazine and asking the midwife if she could hurry things up a little because she was due back in work after lunch.

Fast forward to today, and this morning the first thing I heard was the sound of Sunny talking on the phone, filtering into the bedroom. The first words I heard were:

"…it was like he was just raking my back with a soldering iron, I nearly fainted it was so bad!"

It appears that every time she tells the story, it gets a little more exaggerated.

My bet is that in a couple of weeks she'll be telling everyone how five people had to hold her down while the tattooist did the outline with a nail tied to the tip of a bull-whip… and did the coloring with a full-sized blunt pitchfork.