#12 Birth date on a ring - or a tattoo or - ...(identity theft...?)

There is a jewelry company that advertises in the New Yorker (my dad has bought me a subscription for several years, I love that magazine although I am only now working through my back-to-2008 backlog) and the Roman numerals in their ring dates (the chunky dates are the basic ornamentation of the rings) always catches my eye.

I have looked at the website a couple of times (John-Christian.com) but couldn’t justify the price since I have so much other jewelry – hahaha, who am I kidding, readers know I have probably spent more money on less stuff but I could not decide what numbers to put on my ring. My birth year? My birth date? My wedding date – naaaahhhhh…

Also the site seemed to be about gifts for others – those you have been born by, and given birth to – not to buy for yourself. Well anyway that was my guilty take on it. My kind-of-happy-to-discourage-self-from-buying take on it.

Then I wondered, in this day and age of identity theft, when we are told not to leave a purse hidden under 30 blankets in a car trunk for even 5 minutes if that purse contains a drivers license or social security card, should I wear a ring with any personal info? Am I at risk just for ordering that ring?

In general I think the only way we can protect ourselves is to keep monitoring our online accounts for odd activity – so many places of business demand our DOBs and Socials and you know, I know, they don’t keep them as locked up as they could/should – think about this, it is usually very low-paid people who do insurance billing. And guess which person in the doctor’s office has your personal info… Once someone used my credit card on a porn site and it was right after I had been to the doctor’s office. And you can believe or not that I had not been using that particular card online, so the doctor appointment was my only risk factor. (Actually – although this makes a pretty good story it may not be accurate, the risk factor may have been my ordering tickets to a comedy club by phone. Gynecologist, comedy club – you can see why I didn't go with exact details.)

If a ring puts me at risk, would I be less at risk getting personal details as a tattoo? It would be attached to me...

One of this year’s tattoo ideas (yep a wide range of creativity and crazy) was getting my date and maybe even hour of birth on my arm. Now, I do think that Angelina Jolie tattooing the latitude and longitude of where her kids entered her life (I read that she recently added Brad’s place of birth in Oklahoma too, as line #7) helps a tiny bit to take away the association of numbers-on-arms with what was done to the Jews by the Nazis.

Hmmm…Angelina Jolie – Sarah Bowie – even I struggle to make this connection. How else do we resemble each other...

We are not in the same category. She is so extreme – has covered up her ex Billy Bob's name (nope I do not have a Craig tattoo, which I think he sees as a lack of my faith in our relationship) and Angelina has gotten many other tattoos – pictures, pictures, words, Asian, Roman, things that meant something to her at the time, although surely she has evolved past some of it by now - yep, has had a few do-overs.

And then given her career, every time she makes a movie they have to cover up the artistry. Oh! That is my connection to Angelina! I have to hide my tatts too.


(If we are seriously expected to believe this is something on Angelina's body – I have to also believe it was taken from about 5 miles away and clumsily enlarged. Hard to unflatter Angelina but they have done it.)