My sisters are poster girls for the things you do not want to do.

My baby sister got a tattoo with her fiance’s name on it. After they were married he cheated on her and that was the end of that. But the tat remained. Until she needed to have it removed for work. So she began the excruciatingly long and expensive process. (For those interested, the extended version of this story.)

My middle sister, after struggling with her weight through some pretty severe dieting and getting nowhere, decided to have her tummy tucked. Her wonderful tattoo of cowboy boots and a hat is entirely gone, except for a small black dot that looks a bit like a mole. And she has a huge “Frankenstein scar” from the middle of her side to the other middle of her side and across her body not too far under her belly button. She says (now) that if she’d known how bad it would look she wouldn’t have done it. (Good. Saves me going under the knife.)

Those are my sisters. In these instances, at least, poster girls for what you should NOT do.

And just because of the title and the fact that I love this song so much (though the rest of the album is depressingly negative, as one would expect of a newly divorced singer), “Poster Girl on the Wrong Side of the World” by Beccy Cole.

Dang. It always makes me cry.

Thanks to all the soldiers who ought to be the great poster folks.