I saw a stat on tatts the other day. There are 45 million Americans sporting tattoos.

It was Albert Camus who said, “We are all special cases.” The tattoo is proof of that. We are so desperate to be special that we’ll tattoo our heads, faces and even tongues to escape anonymity. I know the school of thought that says the tattoo is all about personal expression. If so, then why does the tattooed person have to show all of us his or her body art?

Tattoo on the breast; wear plunging neckline. Tattoo on the bicep; wear muscle shirt. Tattoo on the ankle; wear sandals. Tattoo on the small of the back; wear low riding jeans. Tattoo on the calf; wear shorts.

Don’t jump to the wrong conclusion here.  I’m not against tattoos. (I don’t have any but I do have a really cute mole; we’ll save that for another time.) Truth is, if it wasn’t for tattoos most of us would never read anything. Go shopping at the mall and you can read and see all kinds of things written on human bodies. About the only thing we read other than tattoos are texts on our “smart” phones, an ironic choice of words since texting pretty much teaches us how to corrupt or misspell words. The only “books” some people will “read” today are the ones on tape. And writing? Emails are the extent of that for most of us, and most of the communication by email is poor to say the least. Seriously, I read some emails and don’t have a clue what the person is trying to communicate.

A couple of years ago a young college graduate saw me writing in long hand. He was actually amazed at the effort — what we called back in the Dark Ages “penmanship.” He told me he never learned to write in cursive; all he could do was print. To me that was a stunning admission from someone who had a degree and everything.

Call me an ol’ fogey, but between tatts and texting I’m a little concerned about the future of art, literature and writing in this country. Sorry, but for a guy my age, the Tasmanian devil will always be Looney Tunes rather than artistic in the same way Elmer Fudd singing “I killed the wabbit!” will never be operatic. That’s especially true when the tattooed person has their “Taz” positioned just above their, as some texting wizard would put it, but crak.

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and an author.