In 1982, after her parents’ divorce, Nicole Colbert was a 15-year-old New York City transplant in Madison, Wisconsin. Her solution to teenage angst among the cheeseheads was getting a black-widow spider tattooed on her upper arm. By 1989, the spider didn’t jibe with her nascent teaching career, so she went to a plastic surgeon to get it removed and was informed that the only option at that time was cutting out her skin and rocking a large scar instead of a spider. So there were a few more years of long sleeves until, in 1995, a laser became available that could remove the dubious artwork.
“Think about the decisions you made when you were 15,” says Colbert, now a dance-theater artist. “How many of them would you like to stick with for the rest of your life?”
