Once upon a time, there was this guy.

Which, by the way, is how the most awful of stories usually begin.

Anyway, there was this guy, this guy who I was just sure I was going to spend the rest of my days with. Because when you’re 18, you know everything. In fact, when you’re 12 you know everything. For real. Just ask my daughter.

So there was this guy, and there was also this girl. Not me. Another girl. A girl who, one afternoon during a particularly boring Earth Science class, dared me to get a tattoo of The Guy Who I Knew I’d Never Be Without.

Unable to say No to a dare (I can today, people, so don’t even try it), I did it. Yep. It was awesome. And by awesome I mean that my father STILL doesn’t know about it.

I remember when I showed it to my mother in our den just after it had been done (God forbid I tell her before, and I still don’t know what possessed me to tell her ever). It was still, shall we say, oozing. And she just said, “Oh! Oh my! Um, do not tell your father.” And that was that.

And that boy and I? We totally were together for the rest of…that month.

Seriously, my advice to today’s youth? If you ever want to permanently break up with someone, just get their name permanently inked on your body. That ought to firm up that “there is no way I can’t be with you forever” mentality for, oh, a few weeks at best.

Obviously, I could not keep this moniker on my hip forever. So back I went to the glorious tattoo studio (and by glorious I mean that I’m real lucky I didn’t walk out of there with anything in addition to a tattoo), and said, “You have to do something with this.”

To which the tattoo guy responded, “Uh, that will be difficult. All I can really do is make it a rose. And it will have to be blue.”

Because that makes sense. A blue rose. You see those everywhere. Clearly, this guy was creatively challenged.

So, a blue rose it became. It’s awful with a capital A.

However, I recently gleaned a glimpse of Bret Michaels’ Every Rose Has Its Thorn motorcycle, and as it turns out, the rose on that bike looks almost identical to the one on my hip. IT’S EVEN BLUE! So now I simply tell people that this whole thing worked out exactly as it was supposed to.

I’m sure Bret would not be at all freaked out.

But now I’m thinking of getting a tattoo that actually means something to me (beyond representing my very public love for Bret Michaels). So I’ve started a Pinterest tattoo board to keep track of what I like. And I don’t know that I’ll ever do it. But let me tell you, trying to narrow down the field to what one thing you’d ink permanently onto your person is a great way to learn a bit about yourself on a Monday afternoon.

Just Saying.