Thing to Do #75: Get a Tattoo and/or Piercing-The Tattoo

As long as I remember, getting a tattoo was a foregone conclusion.  I would get a tattoo of a bull (to represent my stubbornness – a gift of being a Taurus) and I thought the perfect place to get it was on my hip/upper thigh.  I didn’t know anyone else at the time that had a tattoo there, so I thought it was original placement in a world of “tramp stamps” and barbed wire around the arm.  I got my tattoo when I was 19 and although I was young, I’ve never regretted it.  The tattoo I have isn’t in a visible place unless I’m wearing a bathing suit, its pretty small, its unique in that I designed it, and I’ll always be a Taurus!

It was the spring of my Freshman year and two other girlfriends went with me.  One of the other girls was also getting a tattoo – of Tweety Bird.  We arrived on a Friday night at Ancient Art Tattoo in Roanoke, VA.  Being Friday night, it was quite busy, and we had to wait awhile until it was our turn.  I had drawn out how I wanted the bull to look – kind of a caveman drawing look, just an outline of a bull charging.  Although I liked the drawing I had originally created,  the tattoo artist wanted to work with it a little.  This is the only thing I regret -that I didn’t pay close enough attention to his rendering and the legs of the bull became crossed in a completely unnatural way.

I went in by myself mostly because it didn’t occur to me to ask my girlfriends to go in with me.  I had several girlfriends that had already gotten tattoos by this point and had told me that their tattoos didn’t really hurt; one girl had fallen asleep while hers was being done.  Therefore, I went in foolishly expecting it NOT to hurt.  It did.  A lot.  Because I was by myself, I didn’t have anyone to talk to to distract me.  The tattoo artist tried his hardest to hold a conversation with me, but I think he was mostly talking about Star Wars and either way, I don’t think I could have been distracted from the pain.  The whole process was over in about 30 minutes and then it was my other friend’s turn.  She did ask us to go in with her; her tattoo was on her stomach and she giggled the whole time.

Like my belly button ring, I often forget I even have my tattoo.  Even when I have been around friends on multiple occassions with a bathing suit on, there have been plenty of people that never noticed.  I guess because it is all red, people often ask if it is real or if its a stamp, rather than a tattoo.  I have had people think it was a dog, a pig, and most often, just a “cow,” rather than a bull. 

Who else has a tattoo?  Has a great horror story of a tattoo (an ex’s name or a visible tattoo that makes getting a job more difficult)?