No Tattoos in Bethleham

10-12-2012

Jack has a glitter tattoo on his forearm that he adores. He got this tattoo a couple weeks ago at a friend's birthday party and it still looks almost brand new.

Jack came home from school today and told me that he wasn't going to wash off his tattoo, they wanted him to but he wasn't going to. Ever curious as to who 'they' is to a six year old I enquired further. Jack has a school Christmas play coming up in a couple days and was told by his teacher that he needed to remove the tattoo before then.
Because there weren't any tattoos in Bethlehem.

Now I have a long documented problem with situations just like this, this is one of my many flaws that I'm trying not to pass down. I would rather Jack learned to pick his battles, at the very least better than I tend to, rather than resist just for the sake of resisting. But I have a bit of a problem with this request, and more so the reason given. In this case I know what the reason is, and it's not a good reason, so it's being substituted for an incorrect reason.
There were tattoos in Bethlehem, as well as every other place in the world, and tattoos were at least a thousand years old by that point. So I quickly verified some facts and armed Jack with them, should the subject be brought up again. An educated stance is always on higher ground.

It's taken me most of my life to accept that a good reason is rarely the reason you get. But you should always demand a good reason, just not necessarily to your dying breath as I'm prone. As far as I'm concerned, an incorrect reason is an invalid reason. Either way I don't feel that Jack should have to get rid of his beloved tattoo because of how it might look with the rest of his mouse costume, certainly not without a good reason.

Now I'm not really trying to cause trouble here, we've enrolled Jack in a CoE school and thus, I'm expecting certain, shall we say, moral clashes from time to time. I don't expect this to come to anything, I don't expect to hear anything more about it at all. But there's a principal here that I feel strongly about and clearly it's important to Jack if he was already willing to make a stand. I want him to be prepared to take the strongest position he can and know that I'm with him.

I am pretty certain that they didn't have Darth Vader in Bethlehem.
But it the films do say it was a long long time ago.