Save you some time: > an older Chinese-speaking woman in a university locker room when we were changing clothes … asked me what I thought the Chinese character

Save you some time: > an older Chinese-speaking woman in a university locker room when we were changing clothes … asked me what I thought the Chinese characters on my shoulder (tattoo #1) meant, and I told her. Then she asked me what I was at school to study, and I said law. She frowned and told me the tattoo was better suited for someone in the arts — that I should hurry up and get into the arts. We both laughed. > Apparently, tattoo No. 2 was actually one of those 404 Error messages, when an online search comes up blank. So my arm said, more or less: “Result not found.” … I spent years afterward stubbornly telling people it meant “the eternal search.” It sounded more elegant than “I didn’t find a correct translation of my name on the internet.”