At A Glance
Author	Jasonthe29th
Contact	Jasonthe29th@bme.anon
IAM	jasonthe29th
When	Six months ago
Artist	Jonathan Pitcher
Studio	Alter Ego Tattoo
Location	Augusta, Georgia

"All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck -- who keeps right on going -- is the man who is there when the good luck comes -- and is ready to receive it."- Robert Collier

One day a friend of mine from IAM challenged me to come up with 100 original phrases for knuckle tattoos. You know, two four letter words like, "HARD CORE", or "FIST FULL", that people tattoo on their fingers so you can see just what they are made of. Well, me being one to never take anything too serious came up with a pretty eccentric list, "FISH TITS", "GOAT MILK", and "CARS KILL" were just a few. It was not easy, but I did make all one hundred, and all of them did work. While it was just a goof, a way to kill an afternoon, it made me realize how serious people take their tattoos. More importantly, how serious I took mine.

At the time that this took place I was still working on my third tattoo, the ship on my arm. It was not going well and I was picking over it and worrying about how I was going to color it and what it would say. Basically anything you could nit pick about a tattoo, I was. I really needed a break from it. To be honest I was a little worried about my future. You see, I would like to have a full sleeve on my right arm, but at the rate I am going, it could take a life time to achieve. If I take every thing I do to my body so serious, I may never get another tattoo again.

While compiling my list I intentionally omitted a few for either being too serious or too common. "FROM HELL", did not make the cut. Neither did, "ROCK HARD". Another one that I omitted for some strange reason was, "DUMB LUCK". At the time I don't know why, but it felt like it was different from the rest. I just saved it for myself I guess. Then, as time went by, it kind of grew on me. And then it really stuck. I thought about getting it tattooed on. But I wasn't going to get anything tattooed on my knuckles, that's just not my style. So I had the bright idea to put them on my toes. It was the perfect spot. A place that I wouldn't have to look at all the time, and its not like the toes are some valuable piece of real estate that I want to save for later. It would have the same effect as the fingers, but with the subtle cuteness of the toes.

So I figured, "why not?"

I told people that I was going do it for a couple of weeks. Everyone thought it was a funny idea, but I don't think anyone took me serious. I knew that if I got it done, that ninety nine out a hundred people would want me to explain it to them. "Why your toes," What's dumb luck mean?", but, if that one person out of one hundred "got it", If just one person thought it was as funny and clever as I did, it was worth it. I didn't really have any extra money at the time, but in an act of, you guessed it, dumb luck, a customer gave me a huge tip for some work that I had done. So, I went up to Jonathan Pitcher at Alter Ego, and told him to do it.

It was during First Friday, a monthly art festival, and Jon's shop was packed with window shoppers. There was lots of talking, but no tattooing. So when I hopped up in the chair and pulled out my size thirteen's, it was needless to say I have an audience. Jon drew the letters on with a BIC and went to work. Lucky for him I scrubbed pretty good. I have to admit, it hurt. The little toes hurt worse than the big ones, but it really only hurt while he did it. After I was done, Jon was busy for the rest of the night. They healed up as well as you would expect toes to heal. I have no complaints with them.

Now that I have this done, it feels like a weight has been lifted. The pressure of my other tattoos to be perfect in every way has been lifted substantially. And now I felt like I had my eyes opened a little bit wider. I didn't have to take this so serious any more. I mean, I have got DUMB LUCK tattooed on my toes for god's sake. I've got that bad tattoo out of the way and I could move on.

Being the good contributor that I strive to be, I sent in my pictures to BME. Not really thinking a lot about it. I posted on my page an all that, but I still didn't really think a huge deal would be made of it. However, that afternoon I got an email it just read, "Ha, that's great!"
It was from Glider. He was the one person out of 100 that got it. That made me like them even more. In my quest to get a fucked up silly tattoo that would lower the bar for all the rest, I may have just got the best one I will ever get. Or is it the best thirteen I will ever get?

Shannon even liked them enough that he put them on the cover of BME:

I'm not going say that I am a pioneer in toe tattooing, but since then I have seen some pretty classic ones from other people who "get it". LET'S DANCE and JUST MEAT are a few good ones. And I would imagine there will be lot more to come.

While there is nothing wrong with taking your body very seriously and you should, there is just something to remember, these are just tattoos. If you worry about every little thing about them, you will end up hating them. For me getting my toes tattooed was the best thing I could ever do. It showed me that it is okay to be funny and its okay to have fun with your body. Tattoos should be an equal balance of content and design. I was leaning too far towards design and forgot that what a tattoo says about you is just as important. I think that my toes helped tip the scale back right. So now I can look at my future endeavors into body modification with a new set of eyes and not have to worry as much.

After all, I've got DUMB LUCK.