Small black fine line lettering reading BE HAPPY in capitals on a person's forearm, against grey striped fabric.

Be Happy lettering on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows the words BE HAPPY in thin, black, sans-serif capitals on the inner forearm. The letters are evenly spaced with a slight gap between words, and the linework is crisp with solid black ink. The skin is light and the background is a grey fabric with white vertical stripes, with the subject placed in the centre of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Text Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Anselm had been told to paint the gate board in plain letters, nothing ornamental, as the Rule asked. He mixed the black on the cloister step that morning, thinned it with linseed, and pulled a chalk string taut between two nails. The abbot wanted ABBEY OF SAINT WILFRID in capitals a carter could read from the lane. Anselm did that well enough. Then he stood back and looked at the bare board beneath it.

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Brother Cuthbert came out from the kitchen wiping flour from his hands and asked what the second line was meant to say. Anselm told him he had not decided. Cuthbert read the first line twice, shrugged, and said the abbot would certainly have an opinion. Anselm measured the spaces with a sliver of willow, leaving a narrow gap between the words so they would not crowd each other, and painted three words in the same thin, even strokes, just as the lettering on the first line. When he finished, he went to the chapel and sat through vespers without once looking at the board.

The abbot read it the next morning with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead and said nothing for a long while. Then he asked who it was for. Anselm said the lane. The abbot said the lane was full of men who walked it looking at their boots, and that a board might as well be honest with them. He told Anselm to leave it where it was. By Thursday a carter had stopped his cart at the gate, read the board aloud slowly, and laughed so hard he had to sit down on the kerb.