CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Geoff and I had been married barely a week when he realized his platinum wedding band was missing. We'd known it didn't fit as tight as it should, but thought it was snug enough -- and heavy enough -- that he'd notice if it slipped off.

It did. And he didn't.

Ring No. 2 -- white gold from a pawn shop -- fit far more snugly. Once Geoff struggled it over his knuckle, that ring didn't budge. Some time (and perhaps a few pounds) later, the ring began to strangle his finger. He greased and wiggled it off.

Then promptly lost it.

Ring No. 3 -- stainless steel, from an upscale gumball machine -- lasted the longest. (Though it's generally believed that quality lasts, I think ugly lasts longer. Buy something that's unattractive, but reasonably priced -- it lasts for years. Indulge in nice earrings, they're lost in a week.)

"If I manage to lose this ring," Geoff said of this last, "then I'm just going to get a ring tattooed on my finger."

And, yeah. He's now soliciting recommendations for a tattoo artist.

While not passionately opposed to tattoos, I'm also not a huge fan. I've seen how the effects of pregnancy can alter a once cute linked double heart into something that resembles the footprints of an oversized duck. What seems like a good idea at 20 is almost never what a 40-year-old would select.

Rather than being a display of a person's individuality and their idea of what qualifies as art, tattoos seem to cause the person to be stuck at the age they were when they got it. There was a time when mullets were all the rage. I think of tattoos as having a permanent mullet.

I've heard some reputable tattoo artists will try to discourage people from having a name inked to their skin, but the heat of passion can make them hard to discourage.

There are websites devoted to the creativeness some have employed to disguise or cover tattoos. Oddee.com has pictures of one man who had the name Tracy etched into the skin right over his heart. After they broke up, he had a second tattoo put on -- large red letters spelling out "VOID."

Actor Johnny Depp once had "Winona Forever" tattooed on his arm, but after they broke up, had the "na" removed so it now reads, "Wino Forever."

Aaron Evans of Bristol, England, must've thought he'd be safe getting a neck tattoo of his own name, rather than a girlfriend's. As if his name wasn't enough, he had his birth date added beneath it. Both were clearly visible on the video the security camera recorded of him breaking into a car.

While surfing the Internet looking at funny tattoos, I ran across a blog called Buried with Children, written by a nurse who works in adult critical care. She wrote about going into a patient's room with another nurse named Judy to give the patient a bath. The patient, a woman, had a tattoo on her stomach that said, "Frank's," along with an arrow that pointed downward.

The nurses completed their task without comment, then set the patient up for breakfast when a man walked in who the patient said was her husband.

"Oh, hi," said Judy. "You must be Frank."

The man looked confused and then said, "No. My name is Jimmy."

I imagine that patient regretted ever getting the "Frank" tattoo.

But didn't regret it as much as that nurse.

Reach Karin Fuller at karinful...@gmail.com.