Back in March, WordPress asked me what tattoo I wanted and where I would put it. I answered the question. Thoroughly, I thought. I even provided photographic evidence.
Apparently, that was not enough.
Now WordPress wants to know what tattoo I would get right now and why. I’m beginning to suspect someone at WordPress owns a tattoo parlor and is trying to drum up business.
The problem is that I already have the only tattoo I ever really wanted. For most of my life, I had absolutely no interest in getting one. I had nothing against tattoos. I just never had anything I wanted permanently etched into my skin. Then my daughter, Lizzi, and I decided to get matching tattoos.
Mine is high on my upper arm, where it is mostly hidden unless I intentionally show it. The design is an outline of Cinderella dancing with the prince, with the words, I will dance with Cinderella.
Those words matter because of Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Cinderella,” a song about a father watching his little girl grow up far too quickly. One minute she is asking him to dance. Then suddenly she is dressed for the prom. Then she is a bride. That song was meaningful to me long before WordPress ever started pestering me about tattoos, and it became even more meaningful on Lizzi’s wedding day.
At her reception, our father-daughter dance included that song. So yes, I actually got to dance with Cinderella. But there was another part of that night I didn’t mention when I wrote about the tattoo back in March.
For the final song of our dance, I had a surprise waiting for her. I had replaced Bob Carlisle’s vocals with mine, and Lizzi had no idea I had done it. She didn’t know until the song started playing and she realized that the voice singing to her was not Bob Carlisle’s.
It was mine.
That moment is one of the reasons the video of the dance means so much to me. You can actually watch the realization hit her. For everyone else, it was a song. For her, it suddenly became something her dad had made specifically for her.
There are some moments in life that feel important while they are happening. Others somehow become even more important with time. That dance has done both. For a few minutes, I was dancing with my little girl again, except she wasn’t little anymore. She was a bride.
That is the strange trick parenthood plays on you. Childhood disappears one ordinary day at a time. You don’t notice it happening because you are busy living it. You are carrying them, driving them around, watching them perform, arguing with them, laughing with them, worrying about them and trying to help them become who they are going to be. Then one day you look up and they are grown.
And if you are fortunate, you get a moment that somehow gathers all those years into one place.
For me, one of those moments was standing on a dance floor with my daughter on her wedding day while a song about fathers and daughters played around us. Then came another song, and this time, the voice she heard was mine.
So if WordPress is insisting that I have to get a tattoo right now, my answer really hasn’t changed. I’d choose this one. Not because I need another copy of it somewhere else. One is plenty. But if the real question is what matters enough to permanently mark my body, I already answered that.
I spent most of my life believing there was nothing I wanted permanently written on my skin. Then I realized there was something already permanently written on my heart.
I will dance with Cinderella.
And I did.
Sorry, WordPress.
You’re still not getting a second tattoo out of me.
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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt
