By sophomore year of high school, everyone was getting exotic piercings and tattoos.
The former option excited me – until my friend Kim got an infection in her tongue ring barbell and my other friend’s belly button ring got infected. I had a conundrum. Could I get illegally stapled by some Sons of Anarchy looking dude across town in a musty shop where the smell of last night’s after party hung still in the air? Yes. I could have. And I probably would have if not for the example-of-what-not-to-do my friends like Kim had set and that boy in my art class whose tattoo band-aid never actually came off (because it looked like someone had infected him with chicken pocks using a ballpoint pen under there).
“Come on, Ashley,” I said, “you’re smart. What’s the common denominator here?”
It wasn’t the piercing. People get tummy piercings all the time that don’t turn into a navel version of wrestler’s cauliflower ear. It had to be something else. And then it hit me. Because they were all doing their piercings and tattoos behind their parents’ backs while sneaking out on Friday night and using saved up allowance and gas money, they were going with the cheapest and least researched peeps for their penetrative body mods. And getting what they paid for in the end.
And the modern version of this story is no better.
They say that in the age of information ignorance is a choice. So the fact that a 13 year old girl recently went to a 19 year old dude through Facebook for a $20 tattoo doesn’t speak much for her researching skills online. At the very least, she could’ve Googled: “What should I expect out of this experience I’m voluntarily undergoing to permanently specialize my flesh message?” Mind you, I’m too fickle for tattoos, so this isn’t research I’ve personally performed. However, I feel like if there’s a “how shit works” site dedicated to this topic, the expectations wouldn’t include cleaning the skin with Jack Daniels. Or shoeing in “belleve” for “believe” like in the story I just read.
In his defense, “Belleve” is one “u” away from “Bellevue” – like the nutfarm hospital.
So, mayhaps he needed quick cash cause he’d just departed there.
Ya know, without permission.
As for me? No, tattoos were never for me. Because even if they didn’t get infected like my art class friend’s did, I was too fickle. Plus, you can bet the kid in this story got her ass beat for it about as bad as the dude did by the law for inking a minor. Plus-plus, I weighed my options and decided I wanted a belly button ring equally as much as I wanted to remain uninfected. So what did I do to get my piercings? Why, I got my lovely mom to support the idea 100%. By cashing in on good old fashioned emotional blackmail I’d been collecting like a nerd does comics. She could feel upset about what a little shit I was (am?) if she were reading this, but she knows that’s preposterous.
Because you know what they say about when an apple doesn’t fall far from a tree…
Eventually it’s gonna get pierced.