I'm getting old and crotchety. I read somewhere that there are two types of people in the world - those that come in for bed at 11:00pm and those that are just heading out at 11:00pm. Somewhere in my thirties I passed from the latter to the former without even knowing it. Something else that has passed me by is the body art rave. Growing up, the only people I knew with tattoos were sailors and felons. Popeye and Bluto.

As a teenage busboy, I served a man wearing a muscle shirt sporting a heart-shaped tattoo on his left shoulder. The tattoo covered his entire shoulder and was black against his very red skin. The inscription inside the heart read Danielle & Tommy. Except that Danielle's name was scribbled out (in ink) and replaced with Mindy. I sarcastically told their waitress that I guess ink lasts longer than love. She told me that his first wife died and that I was an idiot. Until now, I've kept me tattoo opinions to myself.

My friend Andrew and I were on a cross country flight and seated across from us was a very attractive twenty-something brunette who had some type of unique tattoo along her collarbone/breast line. During the long flight, the brunette fell asleep and Andrew and I studied the tattoo. It was something written in delicate cursive that we couldn't make out completely from our seats. The penmanship of the Inkster was so intricate that we thought her chest was a clue from National Treasure. Andrew and I took turns standing up and stretching (wink, wink) trying to divine what secret message her chest revealed. Alas, after an hour of craning our heads in all directions to no avail, she woke up and the search for the truth stopped. Near the end of the flight, I struck up a conversation with the girl and I got around to asking her what was tattooed on her chest. She told us that it was her favorite Emily Dickinson passage and that she had it tattooed on her chest so her boyfriend could read it while they made love.

I barely remember much from my American Literature lessons in college about Emily Dickinson other than she liked to write about flowers and planting gardens. Maybe that could get her boyfriend excited, but not me. If Mrs. Quasi was going to get a chest tattoo I hope it would be the ESPN headline scroll, or the Dow Jones stock ticker. Nothing would get me more excited than seeing my IBM stock was up 2 points today.

In our triathlon circles, I'm seeing large numbers of people branding their bodies with the M-dot tattoo. I've seen M-dots on people's arms, legs, shoulders and chests. I biked with a woman who had the M-dot in the tramp stamp region of her lower back. Clearly she takes peddling ass seriously. Most of these athletes get the tattoo in recognition of their completing the Ironman. That logic is the same as me getting SUPERCUTS shaved into the side of my head because I filled my customer loyalty card with 10 haircuts.

What other consumer brands do people tattoo themselves with to prove they used the product? Could you imagine getting a Mickey Mouse tattoo because you rode Space Mountain until you puked? How about getting an Apple tattoo because you were the daily champion of the Words with Friends iPad app? Or, maybe you should get a Barack Obama tattoo when you earn enough money to move into a higher tax bracket?

I'm going to make a unilateral ruling here - the M-dot tattoos are stupid. Nobody wants to see your ink to remind them that they are athletically inferior to you.

I'm only going to make one exception - Following our completion of Ironman Florida I talked to a woman with the M-dot tattooed on her big toe. We laughed for a minute about the levels of pain involved in jabbing needles into a bony area of her body. Then she told me why she got the tattoo. When she is ninety years old and bed ridden in a nursing home, she can pull the sheets up over her feet, look down at her big toe and remind herself of one great goal she accomplished in her life. Which might just be a little more impressive than IBM +2.15…157.12……..AAPL +0.47…640.25.

Trent Theroux is a director of finance, a graduate school professor, a father, an athlete and according to Mrs. Quasi, a passionate lover. He failed grammar both times he went through the fifth grade because of his complete ignorance in the uses of commas. You can contact Trent to provide comments, essay suggestions and grammatical corrections at ttheroux@jwu.edu.