I don't understand this "Think about how awful it will look in the nursing home!" mentality. Odds are, between wrinkled, pasty skin, varicose veins, thinning hair, ever expanding nose and ears, hair in wierd places, incontinence, an inability to chew hard food, bed sores, and dementia, my tattoo will be the least of my worries.
It might be the only thing that gives me joy, if my kids decide not to visit me because I smell funny.
:-)
LOL!
"....well you see this Cobra on my left arm? I got it when I was trecking through the Sahara....there we were, no water and the camel had PMS and suddenly, over the horizon we saw....."
Neither do I, since in about thirty years every fact we think we know about aging today will have been overturned, nanotechnology will allow people to shape and resculpt their bodies any way they want (including simple tattoo removal) and average life spans are going to shoot up to 200 years or more.
This isn't the Fifties - the world is headed for profound changes and the old "rules" about things like tattoos are simply irrelevant today.