When I was in my last year of high school I started to go to my cousin’s house in Philadelphia to hang out with his friends. I always hung out with older people, like two to three years older than me. I just liked that age group. It started when I use to skate alone at the skate park because none of my friends in my grade skated. Literally right after school I would go to the skate park alone, The skate park was probably the worst park in and around the Philadelphia area. The park was filled with “lurkers” ( that’s what we called people that would just sit there all day and smoke cigarettes and literally do nothing else). I would come home from the skate park and my parents thought I would smoke because there was so much second hand smoke that would get on me I would smell like I smoked a pack a day. There was also very little do to in the park, I mean I think there was one ledge there that you could grind and maybe some launch ramps but they were made of wood so pieces of the ramp would be all over the place because they were so old and beaten up. I would still be there for hours every day just skating around hitting the same ramps over and over again in till I was physically not able to skate. So then the older kids noticed me and took me in, they never pressured me in to drugs or drinking but I wanted to do that because they were doing it and I looked up to them. I only smoked weed a handful of times but when I did, I did it with them. I wanted to stand out and not be known for the youngest kid in the group, so I thought if I did what they did they wouldn’t look at me like that. When they graduated high school I still had two years left so after that I started to hang out with people my own age. Even at that time I still wanted to stand out from the rest so I guess that’s the time I really started to think of getting a tattoo, because I would be the few in my class with a tattoo or maybe even the first one.
Back when I was seventeen I was still trying to figure out who I was, was I just going to be just one of the crowd or I’m I going to stand out? When I was going to my cousin’s house in Philadelphia everyone was drinking and having a good time, I didn’t drink but I was still having fun, hanging out with people that I haven’t seen since I moved from that area in third grade. Well one of my cousin’s friend had a tattoo gun and would give out tattoos sometimes, they weren’t the best tattoos but they were sterile and they were decent. So when I went over there one night I decided that I wanted one, I made sure he cleaned the needle and knew what he could draw so I just said “okay let’s do this!” When my cousin’s friend was doing the tattoo I was very shaky and unstable, I was bitching and moaning about the pain even though it really wasn’t that bad. They had a lot of fun with the tattoo when they were coloring it in. They drew a “666” in the tattoo and a lot of other dumb stuff when they were coloring it, my cousin also took a turn to color in the tattoo. I was just nervous and scared if I really wanted this but it was too late to back out now. I passed the point where if I didn’t go through with this I would probably regret it more not finishing it instead of just having half of it done. Even to this day you can see all the inappropriate stuff they drew in the tattoo before they colored it in.
Now this was my first tattoo and I am only seventeen so I got it on my thigh so I could hide it from my mother easier. I didn’t want to get kicked out of the house because I knew she would be that drastic. She found out later when I was eighteen and felt so comfortable and one day I got out of the shower and put my shorts on and she just noticed it. She didn’t freak out but she seemed very disappointed in me which is way worse than her being mad at me. She got used to it through or learned to live with it when I got more tattoos. My third tattoo I decided to do something special for her, I wanted a tattoo that she would like. So I surprised her with a mom tattoo on my chest, she loves that one. So the mission was complete, I was one of the first one in my class to get a tattoo and later on I got one that my mother really enjoyed. If you are wondering what my first tattoo was, it was the Wu-Tang symbol and many tattoos later it’s still my favorite one. Maybe because it was my first and I got it with my friends all around me and it was one of the most memorable nights in high school.
Comments: Thanks jared! i did shorten it up yesterday, i had to much detail for other things than actually putting details in to the main point of the story.