I fOUnTed iT AlsO tOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[USNA69]

I bet a lot of you old fogies would be surprised if you took a poll of young officers - how many of them have tatoos.

And maybe you would be surprised. Living in the same town as one's active duty Navy son who had a pool resulted in a lot of being head grill chef and bartender. I was at a lot of pool parties with a lot of Navy aviators and I honestly don't remember any of the guys having tattoos. However, the wives were another story.

 

[kp2001]

I would say around half of my ~180 member class who will be O3's in the Air Force, Army, and Navy (and a couple Public Health) in four months have tattoo's.

I was very surprised when one day I was in the locker room getting ready to go to a surgery with one of my classmates when I noticed he had two huge tattoos on his chest. And it was definately not the guy I would have pictured would have these tattoo's either.

I don't think the 50% rate is indicative of the officer corps in general, but I would bet it's around 30%, maybe a little higher.

I'm going to go off on another tangent here, but one of the funniest things I ever saw was a patient who was a chief in the Navy. He had a belt buckle on that said 'Goin' Down' with an arrow pointing down and then two tattoo's on his chest. Unfortunately this is the era of 'don't ask, don't tell' so I'll never know the truth on that one.