My First Tattoo

Human beings have an insatiable desire to belong. That's a major conflict for those of us who also have an insatiable desire to be left the hell alone. It’s the introvert’s dilemma: We want to be by ourselves, but only sort of. Why is that so hard to understand? Truthfully, I’m not so much an introvert as an antisocial extrovert. I like interacting with people, but I’m really bad at it, and also I sort of hate everybody. I’m a delight at parties, I swear. That might be why I have so much trouble striking up new platonic relationships. At my age, the easiest way to make new friends is to literally make them. That’s why I hang out with my kids. And now, I’ve made our uncool club official with a new logo for all to see. Try not to be jealous.

My four daughters have been de facto members of my social group ever since I invited them to join Halo nights, where I play Xbox games online with my handful of real life friends. My kids are still young enough to think it’s a blast to hang out with me in particular and adults in general. They have so much to learn. My twelve-year-old, Betsy, is on the cusp of realizing the truth. She’s already started to visibly cringe when the other grown-ups and I use words reserved for the youth. One of those words, appropriately, is “cringe.” Another is “yeet.” Every time we use either one, Betsy wants to yeet me out of the house. I’d like to see her try. We’re so shamelessly out of sync with popular culture that we even gave our crew a name. A group of crows is called a murder. A group of kangaroos is called a mob. And a group of my children playing Halo is called a squaldron. Or, more properly, the Squaldron. The exact origin of the term is disputed, but I think my friend Greg said it first by mistake when trying to refer to my squadron of children. Words are hard, especially while consuming the Kraken. It’s the drink nine out of ten doctors recommend for those times when you no longer want to feel your face. As soon as I heard the term, I knew it fit. All of my children have a little squall in them. A lot of it, actually. Whether singing, shrieking, or relaying critical tactical information, everything that goes out over the party chat is one high pitch squeal. To me, the word Squaldron evokes the image of a pack of screeching pterodactyls descending on terrified villagers. That might be anachronistic, but it’s also awesome, which is all that matters. If only my kids exhibited that level of coordination. There’s still some debate over whether or not the title of the Squaldron refers just to my four daughters or to the Halo night group as a whole. Usually, we use the term interchangeably for both, mainly because the English language is imprecise and also because it’s hard to use good grammar while being destroyed by thirteen-year-olds on the other side of the world.

When I came up with a symbol for our group, I gravitated to the terrifying prehistoric beast that wasn’t technically a dinosaur. Then I just had to draw it. I made it look like my webcomics, which is to say, terrible. I can’t create anything freehand, but I can move around simple shapes until people can guess what I’m trying to make. What else do you expect from a style inspired by the stick figures on public restrooms? I steal from the best. Anyway, here was my attempt at the logo. Note the dialogue to make Betsy proud.