Of Tattoos and Tragedy

I noticed what appeared to be a tattoo on the forearm of a customer at Planet Care. It was a series of numbers. This and nothing more.

I tried to determine for myself the significance of the numbers on the arm of this fairly young woman. I imagined internment camps, prisons, totalitarian regimes. Then I thought, maybe it's just a phone number that she's scribbled on her arm. But the numbers were too stylized, too uniform, too dark to be the result of a spontaneous scribble. So I had to ask.

"Is that a tattoo?"

She nodded and smiled elusively.

"What is the significance of those numbers?"

"It's my student identification number from Virginia Tech."

My brain attempted to process information while I attempted to continue a dialogue with this woman.

Why would she choose to have her student id number tattooed on her arm?

"Do you go there now?"

What about Virginia Tech is worthy of honoring in that way?

"I just graduated with my Masters," she said with a well-deserved air of accomplishment.

And then I realized.

"So you were there during the tragedy?"

She nodded and continued to tell me about her Masters in something or another. But I'd stopped listening. Because I realized the magnitude of what she'd experienced. And I realized how invasive my casual questioning had been.

In moments like this when I'm catapulted across time and space and my imagination struggles to recreate possible scenarios, I end up saying something inadequate or inappropriate. My mind races to piece together the past and present, I struggle to remain in the moment, listening, being, while my imagination runs wild.

"I'm sorry you were there during that."

I'm sorry you were there during that?!

"Anyway, congratulations on your graduation! I hope you have many new and amazing adventures!"

Ineptitude takes its toll after a while. The perfunctory and superficial exchanges at Planet Care have conditioned me to exist on that level at all times. I have lost the ability to remove myself from the hustle and bustle of the moment in order to be fully present with another human being. Certainly I failed in this instance.

The killings at Virginia Tech will forever be branded in this woman's memory. She was attending school, attending to the details of your standard college existence. Studying for an exam. Finishing a paper. Dashing to class while stuffing portable food in her mouth. It had been an ordinary day at school, a happy time of preparation for one's future. And inexplicably a troubled man destroyed the collegiate environment and snuffed out 32 lights, 32 lives, 32 friends, colleagues, mentors.

Maybe she had been on campus but was removed from the action. Maybe she had been in the midst of the gunfire. Maybe someone close to her had been killed. Maybe several of her friends had perished on that wretched day in American history.

She wears a tattoo of her student identification number on her forearm, indicating a personal prison, a self-imposed lifelong psychological internment. She wears it on her forearm to remind herself of something I did not want to pry out of her. The tattoo is in plain view. It invites comment and questioning. Surely she realized this would be the case when she decided to wear her history on her sleeve.