The Family Star Wars Tattoos: Three Out Of Four Down!

On Monday night, I went over to hold my daughter’s hand as she got a blaster with “Never Tell Me The Odds” tattooed on her right hip.
Despite being tattooed for eight hours, she didn’t really need me to hold her hand.  But she let me, because this?
This was our family bond.
Our family runs on Star Wars. Gini saw the movie the first week it was out; I saw it fifty-seven and a half times in the theater on its first run, because I commandeered every relative I had into taking me on multiple occasions. (Including, on one notable occasion, showing up an hour early to the film because my grandparents misread the movie time, going in to watch the Death Star trench run, and then watching it all again.)
When our eldest daughter Erin brought her boyfriend home for Thanksgiving, on the second year he admitted he hadn’t seen Star Wars.  This was, in fact, the big secret Erin had kept from us all this time.
“Well, we’re watching that,” we told him.
“Hey, I want to see it,” he said.  “Whenever you want!”
“No. We mean now.” And we delayed dessert until he saw Star Wars.  And I think he liked it, though four people pressuring him that ZOMGGREATESTMOVIEEVER may have altered his opinion.
Which might be funny if that was the first time we’d done that to one of our daughter’s partners.  We’d done that to Amy, too.
And when we got our gigantic big-screen television, and Erin came in to watch the premiere with us, of course it was Star Wars.  And I always worry that maybe somehow this was a thing we made our kids do – but Erin was the noisiest out of all of us, jumping up and down in the seat watching the Blu-Ray detail, trotting out the old trivia facts, talking about fine character details.
It was all cemented by all of us watching Clone Wars and Rebels together, whooping and cheering it up.
So on Monday, Erin got her tattoo, and yesterday, Gini and I both broke parts of our nerd virginity; Gini got her first tattoo – the New Jedi Order symbol on her right thigh – and I got my first tattoo that I utterly cannot hide, a matching NJO symbol on my right forearm.
On Thursday, Amy will get her tattoo – a stylized X-Wing – and our family Star Wars Tattoo Project will be fully operational.
And it’s been a helluva bond.  We’ve spent time laughing as a family as the ink goes in, knowing this is a permanent way of cementing our love.  Maybe the new movie sucks, maybe it’s good, we don’t know.  But these three movies are deep in our blood, and on Thursday they’ll be deep in all of our skin.
You don’t get photos yet.  Not until Amy’s done.  But Gini and I have matching marks on our body, and this is the sort of thing we’d think it was crazy getting matching tattoos sixteen weeks into a relationship, but sixteen years in it feels natural and good and somehow eternal.
I’ll tell you how it goes after the movie.  And tell you what I thought.  And I’ll show you how it all looks, but right now, I can tell you:
It’s fucking amazing.