Black fine line outline of Dumbo the elephant with the words Embrace what makes you different above it, placed on the lower back.

Dumbo outline with quote on lower back

Fine line · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A sleeping Dumbo-style elephant is drawn in a single black outline, with its large ears spread out around its head. Above it, the words Embrace what makes you different are set in black lettering over four lines. The work is in black ink only, and the skin is shown close up at the waistband of jeans.

Fine line Lettering Back Elephant Quote Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pell kept the boarding house on Marine Terrace the way other women kept canaries, with a great deal of fuss and a firm belief that nothing good survived a draught. So when the fair packed up in September and left a grey circus calf behind in our back yard, she declared it none of our business, then spent the whole of Thursday knitting it a blanket.

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I was twelve and cross about my ears. They stuck out like the handles on a sugar bowl, and Ruth Gaskell had already called me Jug at school. I told the calf so, sitting on the upturned coal scuttle while it snored against the wall. It did not seem to mind. Its own ears were enormous and folded over its face like wet sails, and when the wind came off the sea it unfolded them one at a time and let the gulls have a look.

Mr Abernethy, who had the front room and a cough that rattled the teacups, came out with his pipe and watched me for a while. He had been a clown with a travelling company before his knees gave out. 'They called her Little Umbrella,' he said, nodding at the calf. 'Every show some lad in the front row laughed at those ears. Then one night the big top went over in a storm, and she went up the centre pole with her ears spread out like a kite and held the lot of it off the crowd long enough for everyone to get out. The lads who laughed were the ones who needed holding.'

That night I lay under the sloping ceiling and turned my head on the pillow until my ears lay flat on either side, the way I'd seen the calf do, and I listened to the tide working its way up the shingle. In the morning the calf was gone, the blanket was folded on the back step, and Mrs Pell had left a note saying she'd sent it on to a farm in Lancashire. I have never once tucked my ears back since.