The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
If you had to get a tattoo right now, what would it be and why?

I’ve never been one for tattoos. When I was young, my parents instilled in me the belief that only ‘bad people’ had tattoos. I think that was pretty common stereotype in Hollywood back then too.

I did consider getting a tattoo back in and around 2005. I was working out my plan to go live in a rural corner of Africa (initially Tanzania, but later this evolved to Namibia). I wanted some form of ID that could not be taken away from me, could not be stolen or lost. I considered getting a maple leaf (I’m Canadian) with my Social Insurance Number underneath it, tattooed on the back of my left shoulder.

This would mean that even in death, I should still be identifiable (except under extreme conditions).

I ended up not getting the tattoo, trusting that the people around me would be good people (or at least not that evil) and it ended up not being necessary in any way. I worked for an educational charity in rural Namibia for almost two years, then moved to Johannesburg, South Africa for another three working with a different charity.

The thing is, these days, if I were to get a tattoo, it would still be a maple leaf, in the style of our flag. But this time it would be out of a sign of cultural and tribal identity, out of a sense of nationalism that is growing not only in me, but in so many Canadians as we stand up, united, in the face of that evil known as Donald Trump.

In this case, the maple leaf isn’t a safety net or a post-trauma cry for remembrance. Instead of my identity number, I’d have a battle cry under it: “Je me souviens.” I remember (or, possibly more accurately, I remind myself), because we’re not going to forget: We won’t forget what he’s trying to do to us. We won’t forget every single enabler. And we won’t forget the Canadians who went along with it.