Monday, July 13, 2015

Hi Mom, I Got a Tattoo!

As published on Gather the Jews

Hi Mom,

Please sit so you don’t keel when you read this, and remember to inhale and then exhale, in that order: I got another tattoo.

Benjamin Rubenstein's tattoo of a fig tree with green droplets of water

I know you thought my final would be the survivor tumor tattoo I received three years ago, or even the tattoo dots I received before my radiation 14 years ago. I know that you, Dad, and ten percent of women like me exactly how I am. Please let me explain my tattoo and then you will love it like I do.

In Judaism, we use trees to celebrate holidays, weddings and births. I love
consuming food and booze on holidays, and Mom, your other son just got married and maybe he’ll have a child. (No pressure, JD.)
Benjamin Rubenstein with new inner bicep tattoo of fig tree and droplets of green water

Rabbis debate the species of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. One opinion is that the Tree of Knowledge was a fig tree and that after the sin, Adam and Eve knew they were naked and sewed fig leaves to make girdles, meaning they used the very object that caused their downfall to correct the mistake. The very drug—Cytoxan—that killed my first cancer caused my second cancer, and then killed the second cancer, too.

We attain wisdom by learning intellectually or through life experience. I hate myself when I make a mistake: make the wrong decision, say the wrong thing, fail to approach a woman because I fear rejection, eat a single chocolate when I hadn’t planned to. The fig tree symbolizes that I can make a mistake and bounce back and grow from it. Very few mistakes cannot be reversed (besides getting a bad tattoo). Keep reading Hi Mom, I Got a Tattoo!

*****
Updates
I built a new online store within this blog that makes it simple to buy all my products including my books and stickers of Cancerslayer. The stickers are two inches wide by three inches tall on a white background with gloss paper.

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