I was standing at the cockpit door one afternoon after landing in Detroit, handing out “Bye-nows” – kind of bored with it all. The deplaning line came to a stop and there was this black kid standing next to me. He was about 19 or 20 or so and had a tattoo on his right bicep. I looked at it for a couple seconds, then asked, “When you had that ‘tat’ put on, what did you ask for?”
“Harmony,” he replied.
“Really,” I continued, “is that what you think it is?”
“Yeah,”
“Well Son,” I said, “I studied Chinese at the Naval Language Institute at Monterrey, California for 2 years, and that is not ‘Harmony!’
“What is it?” he asked….
“Well, you see this ‘bit’ here, heading down?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, for ‘Harmony’ it has to go up.”
“What’s this mean?” he asked.
“I am not quite sure, but I think it has something to do with sex.”
His eyes got wide open, and his mouth dropped. By that time the line began moving again, and off he went. Thank God!
I chuckled to myself, then hoped I never ran into him again. I have often wondered whether or not he went back to the tattoo parlor….