Black lettering reading must be this tall to ride with a red arrow pointing left, tattooed on the side of the ribs.

Must be this tall to ride lettering on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a tattoo on the side of a torso, showing bold black block capitals reading MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE, with the words split above and below a large solid red arrow pointing left. The lettering has crisp, filled edges and the arrow has a flat red fill with a dark outline. The skin is pale and the image is lit evenly, with the design filling most of the frame.

Lettering Ribs Text Arrow Lettering Sign

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Eddie Pask had repainted the board every spring since his father handed him the brush in 1978, and every spring he tried to get the arrow to point the way the Cyclone turned. It never would. The sign hung on the iron railing by the gate of Hollin Pier, where the queue bent round the candyfloss van and the gulls waited for dropped cones.

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On the last Saturday of August a boy called Dennis Mott stood against the board with his heels down and his chin up, while his grandmother, who had already walked him up the pier twice, insisted he had grown since Easter. Eddie said nothing. He had watched forty years of children stretch like that, and he knew the board did not care what anyone wanted. It only cared where the top of a head reached against the red line.

Dennis studied the arrow, then the sea, and asked why it pointed backwards. Eddie told him it pointed at the people who were not tall enough yet, so they could see the way back to their mums when the ride was done. The boy frowned, decided this was a fair bargain, and ran off to the van for a cone.

That night Eddie took the brush down from its hook, ignored his father's rule about one arrow per board, and painted a smaller arrow beneath the first, pointing right, towards the Cyclone. In the morning the gulls had pecked at the wet paint, and by noon Dennis was back at the railing, pointing at the two arrows and declaring that they had finally agreed on something.