Michael Staggers

Connect What inspired your most recent tattoo?

I lost my mother at 22. My lion tattoo is in honor of her. When I was born, she sat in the car between my twin brother and I. She asked my dad to put music on, and “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played. She always let us know it was our first song we ever heard, and that she’d sung it to us, too. The cowbell around the lions neck is the exact one she rang for me at all of my high school games, including the little duct tape she put on the handle because it hurt her finger.

If your ink could speak, what would it say?

It would say that I love my family. That I believe in loving and honoring them regardless if they still are here with me or not. Family is everything to me. I hope for tattoos in the future to honor my sister I lost when I was 17, and to get a matching or corresponding one with my twin brother (we both have lions, though). I also think my tattoos would show I’m not a complicated man. I wear my heart on my sleeve.

What would you do with the $25,000?

I recently had to change jobs (high school teacher). We would like to eventually sell our current house to move closer to our jobs (we both commute) and my daughter doesn’t have a full sized bedroom at our current house, so we would like to do a few minor renovations that would allow us to be ready for a sale. If there was anything left over, I’d like to do something fun with my wife and kids. A weekend away or something like that. We never get to do those kinds of trips due to my jo