I actually thought about getting a tattoo this week. A friend of mine recently got a new tattoo on her shoulder. She is a young lady in her early 30s. She told me not to tell her mom. I could be her mom, but secretly I applauded her courage in the face of domesticity and raising children. I did tell her that I hoped I was around when she was my age and the tattoo was wrinkly, but secretly I admired her rebellion to try and escape the conservative lifestyle she is living.

This young woman was always ahead of her generation. She had Kool-Aid hair before colored hair was popular. It is amazing her mom hasn’t had heart failure from these young women’s firsts. I suspect the Kool-Aid hair in high school was a rebellion from a learning process that had boxed in her creativity.

I understood that. I didn’t understand at the time I was in grade school, but I do now. I grew up in a time when it was not all right to color outside the lines. The colors and the page had to be perfect and in alignment. The learning process was the same for everyone, and as a result I did not do well with that process in grade school.

I felt like I didn’t fit in, and I struggled with learning in a way that was hard for me. I did feel I was not as smart as the other people in my class and my grades in grade school reflected that. It was only when I reached my junior and senior year in high school and had a few choices in my class structure that school became less of a struggle and more of an avenue to let me use my creativity.

This young woman grew up, started raising a family and became involved in her community. This young woman went to school and started a career to help support her family.

I suspect this young woman’s family might be a little worried because this young woman is doing a few things out of the norm again for the lifestyle she has been living. They might be worried she is rebelling. I would have to say she is.

After talking to this young woman I suspect she is trying to keep the quirky part of her alive before society changes her into someone she doesn’t want to become. She doesn’t want to become domesticated and lose her perky, unusual artsy self, and she was afraid that was happening. She is a smart young lady. A small tattoo is a small rebellion kept under her clothes to remind herself of who she is inside.

How many of us do that as we get older? We change because we feel we need to. We become who our families need us to be, and somewhere we forget that quirky person inside of ourselves who likes tattoos, colored hair and sneaking out at 1 a.m. to sit under the stars and just breathe in life. It might be something different for all of us, but we leave it behind because of responsibility.

What kind of responsible person gets tattoos, colors their hair pink and acts on a spur-of-the-moment adventure?

In my adult life, I have felt like I suspect this young lady feels. In the midst of raising children, paying bills and trying to act like a respected member of the community, my quirky side sometimes screams because it has been lost because of life or the expectations that we think society puts upon us. I have let that happen. This young woman has learned at a much younger age that she still needs to feed that to be happy and be able to be a good mom and wife.

We have seen the looks and the judgments that are passed down on people who look different and act different. We judge what is on the outside because it doesn’t fit in to our thinking about what respectable people should look like. I personally don’t like rings through noses and faces. However, I know some very nice people who sport these rings and are very good citizens. Because they have holes in various parts of their body the judgment is sometimes that they are people to be scared of. In reality, they are expressing a part of themselves that needs to be expressed without hurting anyone else.

I secretly want a butterfly tattoo on my ankle. Even though I am almost 60, I like pink and purple hair. Maybe I’ll take a lesson from my young friend and throw caution to the wind and remember the quirky inside of me. I dare you to do that, too. What would your quirky statement be?

A quote by Tennessee Williams: “A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.”

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send e-mail to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net .Her blog is paringdown.wordpress.com. Listen to KBEW AM radio 1:30 p.m. Sundays for “Something About Nothing.”