When I was twelve, my mother told me that no matter what, she would always love me. Of course, she went on to say, this was contingent on whether or not I ever got a tattoo.
My mother hates tattoos. She hates them with the same passion that other moms hate child predators, cigarettes, and violence. However, unlike pedophiliac smoking guns, there is no serious rationale behind my mother’s aversion to body ink. While she is somewhat worried about the threat of disease in shady tattoo parlors, she has always been more concerned about how they actually look. “It just seems like you’re dirty all the time,” she says.
And yet, even with such flimsy reasoning, my mother manages to vehemently hate tattoos to the point of absurdity. Throughout my life, I could fail out of school, steal a car, or even prostitute myself on Craigslist, and my mother would still support me. But if I ever got a tattoo? Cut off. Disowned. I’d be fending for myself on the streets, with my stolen car and lost dignity.
Naturally, my mother’s severe distaste for tattoos made my twelve-year old self want to get one even more. I would come home from school with pen drawings all over my arms, just to gauge her reaction (I’m lucky I still have both arms today).
“Why do you want one?” she would bark at me, eyes glaring.
“I don’t know,” I’d say. “Just because.”
However, as the years went by, my resolve to get a tattoo weakened. I got good grades and stayed off the police bulletin, earning a spot in the boring, pedestrian, non-rebel camp. While I fantasized about living a life of Orwellian-like rebellion, I could never convince myself to just do it, just rebel a little. And it wasn’t even necessarily about a tattoo, or my mother’s threats. Mostly, I just felt that as I got older, the risk-taker in me died. I reached the point where uncertainty and permanency alone were enough to scare me off, notwithstanding my mother’s promise of dismemberment. I’d developed my own flimsy reasoning for not changing, and for not wanting to change.
So the closest I ever got to true rebellion was wielding a Sharpie at age twelve. And I’ve also chosen not to get a tattoo. Why?… Just because.
Tattoos are as exclusive as the particular individual sporting them. However , there are many voters existing in a world where tattoo as a kind of art is not socially relevant, especially in commercial offices or a work place.