…I got on an elevator with four cops. It’s a City building and the NYPD has some sort of administrative office on one of the floors. I’m standing there with my relatively tame office-girl outfit on, and one of them saw the tattoo on my arm and proceeded to start the following conversation:

Cop 1: You don’t look like someone who’d have a tattoo.

Me: [Speechless, but thinking, do you know me?]

Cop 2: What is it of?

Me: Blue herons. [Hoping a short answer would end the conversation.]

Cop 2: Do they stand for something?

Me: For revolution. And peace.

Cop 3: Oh, you mean like anarchists.

Me: Um, no. [The elevator stops at their floor.]

Cop 4: Like Obama, right? [Pointing at the gigantic Barack Obama button pinned to his chest.] Like Obama?

Me: [Considering the question as the door shuts.] Perhaps.

I’m pretty used to people commenting on my tattoo, and I generally don’t mind. But this is one of the weirder conversations I’ve been engaged in on many different levels. For one, do you really think that because I wear a skirt and heels to work in a City building that you can make assumptions about what kind of person I am? And then make a judgment about whether that kind of person would have a tattoo? As if only certain kinds of people have tattoos?

Anyway, as is usually the case with me, I came up with brilliant answers to their ridiculous questions by the time I reached my office.   It was all I could do to not go back downstairs and say, Oh yeah?  What kind of person do I look like? and I have multiple tattoos! and I voted for Hillary! Oh well, I’ll just have to derive some satisfaction to sharing those with you instead.