Teacher Tattoos

Imagine a guy with a tattoo. Does he have a lot of muscles? Are his jeans ripped? Is he a proud owner of a leather jacket? Perhaps he owns a bike as well. Tattoos have traditionally been regarded as seedy and for big guys on big bikes. However, here at Stuyvesant, many of our faculty and staff with ink prove this convention wrong. Some of these faculty share the stories behind their tattoos.

Vincent Miller

Stuyvesant soccer and girls’ junior varsity basketball coach Vincent Miller explained his tattoos as the girls’ basketball team began to warm up. Miller got his first tattoo right after his uncle passed away when he was a freshman in college. “I was close with him,” Miller said.

“I got a tattoo of his name with ‘rest in peace,’” said Miller, gesturing to his right shoulder. Miller’s parents reacted well once they found out about the tattoo.

“They understood why I wanted to get it. I was 19, so they were definitely okay with it.” Miller turned around quickly and gestured at the girls to start layups.

“It’s a little painful at first. It feels like a pinch, and after a while you get used to it. I got it on the muscle,” Miller gestured to his heaping biceps with a grin on his face. “When people get it on the bones, it hurts more.” Miller said he has “no regrets about getting it.” Miller has no plans to get more tattoos: “No, I’m one and done. I wanted something meaningful,” he said.

Carlos Bravo

Would you believe it if you heard an elementary schooler got a tattoo? Spanish teacher Señor Bravo has many stories to tell, including one about his unconventional tattoo. When he was only eight years old, he was painting with Chinese calligraphy brushes for a school project. Another student began to harass Bravo for his brush, and Bravo put the brush in his shirt pocket to protect it. He told the tale of how the student tried to “grab [his] brush.” However, Bravo didn’t let go. “I put my hand there to protect it,” he explained.

The sharp point pierced the skin on Bravo’s right thumb and left a small dot one centimeter wide. Bravo showed us his thumb, which “to this day, many years later, still has the Chinese ink in it,” he said. Bravo has no other tattoos.

Lauren Stuzin

The places of our childhood seem to stay with us as we grow older. For English teacher Lauren Stuzin, the memories and attachment to her parents’ home inspired her to get a permanent reminder of her old home. “I have an attachment to the home,” Stuzin said. I lived there from when I was four years old.”

“I definitely feel like it's my home even though I don’t live there. My dad tells me that a home is where you hang your hat, but I don’t feel that way. A home is something different than a residence,” she said.

Stuzin got her tattoo about a year ago. “I’m at a stage of life where I don’t feel like I’ll be able to live in a place that I’ll call my home the same way I do my childhood home, at least for a long time,” she said.

Stuzin twisted her arm to point to the general area of her tattoo on her back. Stuzin’s tattoo is the “front of [her] house. There’s a porch, a front door, and [her] room is off to a corner.” Stuzin’s unique tattoo is a literal representation of her childhood home. “The house was yellow, and there’s a hidden attic that someone once fell through.” Stuzin said, reflecting on her home. “My parents own it, they still live there. My brother as well.”

Though Stuzin still calls it home, things are different now. “I feel like I’ll never live at my childhood home again,” she said. “They’ve converted my old bedroom into an exercise room, which is fine. There’s still a bed but I guess the ghosts of workouts are in there.”

Stuzin has no regrets on her tattoo but is unsure if she’ll get another one. “Don’t get a tattoo out of spite. Don’t get a tattoo because your parents don't want you to get a tattoo,” Stuzin said with a chuckle.

More seriously, Stuzin said, “First of all, you need to be eighteen, and you should think about whether or not you want that thing on you forever. I also think that there is a lot of value of having a piece of art on you.”

Thomas Miner

Before you leave for college, all of your older friends and your parents tell you how much the experience will probably change you. For physics teacher Thomas Miner, his college experience in Seville, Spain, inspired his first tattoo. “It was one of the best things that I had done up to that point in my life,” Miner said. “It was an incredible experience to live in Spain and speak another language.”

The tattoo on his arm says “NO”, followed by a figure 8 and “DO”. At first glance, you may wonder how this is related to studying abroad at all. “The figure 8 is Spanish for madeja. When you say this in Spanish, it says, ‘no madeja do,’ which sounds like ‘no me ha dejado,’” Miner explained. “This means ‘it hasn’t left me’ or ‘it hasn’t abandoned me.’ That was the motto of Seville, Spain.” However, he couldn’t just forget about his love for physics. Rather than having a figure 8 for his madeja, Miner decided to make it into a mobius strip.

Unfortunately, Miner’s tattoo, despite being meaningful to him, may cause offense to others by being a reminder of Spain’s painful past. “I had a few regrets once I learned more of the historical implications for the Spaniards and how it has to do with Franco and his fascist regime. But it's something that I wanted, and I respect that I wanted it at the time.”

Miner later got a second tattoo, but this time on his leg. It says the word “TEMPORARY,” which he describes as ironic. “It's just a reminder to myself that things are good; but don’t take it for granted because everything is temporary.” Both times were not painful, due to them not being on sensitive areas of his body. “I had spent years thinking about it. I had come up with all types of drawings and placements and stuff like that. But the day that I did it was a spontaneous moment,” he said.

“One of the things about a tattoo is that it is a permanent thing. That’s one of the more important parts about a tattoo. Tattoos are a permanent reminder of a point in your life where you were, and you said you want this, and you got something permanent on your body. Even if there’s some regret later, I want to trust that I knew what I was doing then and that [my past self] had as much right to get this tattoo,” Minersaid.

People will come and go. Feelings will come and go. Things will come and go. But you, your mind, and your body will always be here for the rest of your life. Permanently inked tattoos will stay on your body with you through years to come, and rather than having a bad decision, choose to have a nice reminder.