Do you have a tattoo that you regret? C’mon - spill.

By NICKY CHAMP

Dolphins, butterflies, stars, yin and yang symbols, hearts, the name of your ex.

They all seem like a good thing to permanently mark your body with at the time but immediately or years afterwards, not so much.

(I just want to add in if any of those things have a significant meaning to you, you obviously don’t regret them and I don’t mean to offend.)

One U.S State is waging a war on drunken and silly tattoo antics by enforcing a mandatory 24-hr waiting period before any comical body art can take place. Boo, hiss to the fun police.

Anyone in Washington D.C. who wanted a tattoo or piercing would have to go in and ask for it, then return more than 24 hours later to get indelibly inked or pierced.

And I’m all for it.

I usually lean to the left so I don’t go in for any nanny state shenanigans but I reckon this measure could’ve saved me (and countless others) from getting a really dumb tattoo.

Alright, fine. It’s a dolphin and it’s on my hip and I regretted it faster than Ron Burgundy in Anchorman could ever say, “I immediately regret this decision.”

It was 1997 and barely out of high school my best friend and I traipsed along to The Illustrated Man in Sydney to get a tattoo to cement our friendship nd celebrate the freedom of leaving our school years behind us.

In the middle of the bikie-filled tattoo parlour with no plan or inkling of what we wanted, we flicked through the designs and looked on the walls for inspiration.

Looking back this really should’ve been a huge red flag but it’s possible we were hungover and not thinking straight. Again another huge red flag.

Let’s just call it my rebellious phase and I was really in it for the thrill more than anything else.

In the end I chose a dolphin with a Celtic wave pattern underneath it (I was into supporting Greenpeace and wanted to move to Byron Bay, which also may explain things) and my friend chose a black script pattern to go vertically on her ankle.

So if I was required to wait it out, I dare say I would not have a permanently leaping dolphin on my lower abdomen. Nor would my friend have an eye on her ankle.

Turns out that “black scripted pattern” was actually an eye when you looked at it horizontally. I can’t tell you how many times my dolphin has jiggled along to that gag.

I’ve thought about getting it removed, which I will do when I’m done having kids and have a spare several hundred dollars to drop on the Celtic ocean.

As for piercings, I came of age in the 90s when every second person, whether rebellious or not, had a belly button ring or a tongue ring or a nose ring so I think the 24-hour period is completely unnecessary; they’re not even permanent. Pierce away, I say.

Should tattoos and piercings require a mandatory 24-hr waiting period? And if you have a tattoo do you regret it or did you contemplate it for a long time before getting it done?