Affirmations of Fate and the Tale of the Purple-Cross-Eyed-Sun

For twelve years, I have been convinced that I got the wrong tattoo.

I don't mean that twelve years ago I chose the wrong tattoo. I mean that twelve years ago, I left a tattoo shop in Spokane, Washington with a completely different tattoo than what I had painstakingly chosen. The error was only partially my own: people who are emphatically and unreasonably scared of needles, and hence simply are incapable of watching the tattoo be applied, should not get a tattoo. However, a tattoo artist that spends 2 hours sitting with you helping you choose a tattoo probably should not inadvertently put on the wrong tattoo. Nor should such tattoo artist get flustered when his error is discovered mid-tattoo because you say something so innocent as "Why would anyone ever tattoo a face onto their body - it would be so eery," such that the face he is at that moment permanantly and mistakingly tattooing on your body ends up cross-eyed. Nor, probably, should the friend who persistantly encouraged you to get the tattoo to cure your fear of needles have tried to save the day by persistantly insisting that the face would be invisible if the tattoo was just filled in with purple.

And, well, just generally, probably no one should have a purple, cross-eyed sun, for any reason, tattooed on the left side of the abdomen, just below the jean line but outside of the bikini line.

Hence, dear reader, I'm sure you can appreciate how for twelve years I have been called upon by old friends to relay to new friends the great and ridiculous story of the purple cross-eyed sun on my belly. And why, for twelve years, I have earnestly thought that I had the wrong tattoo.

But last week I went to my very first trial ever, and while I waited for a partner to clear security I looked up and realized that the Anchorage courthouse is decorated with several glass sculptures of purple suns with wide grins.

Granted, these purple suns with wide grins are not cross-eyed, but they are pieces of Native Alaskan art imported from The Bush, installed in front of airy windows, and the Alaska sunlight beams through them.

Just as they were, the discovery of these purple Alaskan suns with wide grins pretty much confirmed to me at that moment that Fate is a whimsical lady, but boy is she determined to make her point.