On The Subject of Tattoos

There's an old man and a little child sitting on a bench. The child says to the old man “Mister, that's an awfully boring tattoo on your arm. It's just a bunch of numbers.”

The old man replies: “Well, I was about your age when I got it, and I kept it as a reminder.”

“A reminder of happier days?”

“No, a reminder of when the world went mad. Imagine yourself in a land where your countrymen followed the voice of political extremists who didn't like your religion. Imagine having everything taken from you, your entire family sent to a concentration camp as slave laborers, then systematically murdered in this place. They even take your name and replace it with the number tattooed on your arm. It was called the Holocaust, when millions of people perished just because of who they were.”

The little boy, with tears in his eyes, said: “So you kept it to remind yourself about the dangers of political extremism?”

“No, my dear, to remind you.”