The sterile smell fills your nostrils, your ears are bombarded by the buzzing of machines (or screams), and you have butterflies swarming in your stomach -- yes, you are at a tattoo parlour, no doubt. You are intimidated by all of these guys decked out in cool tattoos head to toe, and here comes you wanting an infinity symbol, or an arrow on your fool. You are also anxious because you have seen the videos on YouTube of people freaking out from a tattoo and you are not ready to make a fool of yourself in front of all these strangers. However, not even fifteen minutes go by, if your tattoo is simple enough, and it’s done; you have your tattoo. The real battle is yet to come, because opinions are like bellybuttons: everybody has one, unless you are "Kyle XY." Here are just a few of those:
1. The (annoying) friend who takes credit for going with you:
This is the person that helped talk you into going through with the idea; peer pressure is a major factor in the acquisition of tattoos. While you are extremely grateful that your friend took the time out of his or her day to be by your side while you were being stabbed by ink filled needles, this person acts as though he or she were the one on the table. Don’t be that friend.
2. The instant experts on the healing process of a tattoo:
These people mean the best, but often times they do not have a clue what they are talking about. They’ll come out of the woodwork telling you: “to wait this long to do this," “only use these products," or “it doesn’t matter if you do this." Many tattoos have turned into colorful, scarred, flesh blobs because of the advice of wannabe experts. Listen to your artist, the real expert hopefully.
3. The pokers.
You know exactly who these people are, and you can tell them from a mile away. They’re the ones that want to touch your freshly inked, sore skin. It's like if you get a bruise, and someone pokes it to see if it hurts. Yes, it does hurt. Keep your grubby paws off!
4. The people that catch tattoo fever:
Chicken noodle soup is not getting rid of this fever. Once they see your new tattoo, they're the ones that start looking up designs that hopefully don't look like yours. The fever can end in a week, and they won’t have gotten a tattoo, and they move on with their lives; or they could drop their entire life savings, and come back with every inch of their skin covered. The fever is real.
5. The interrogators.
OK, when you get a tattoo you should be ready to answer an entire mountain of questions, because sooner or later a person like this will come along and they will be worse than an immigration officer that's trying to check to see if your marriage to Helga is legitimate or not. “What does it mean? Why did you put it there? Where did you go? Did it hurt?” and the list goes on and on. Most of the time, the questions come from curiosity or a desire to get one in the future, but in this herd of sheep there is always a wolf. There are indubitably those that want you to feel like your tattoo is less than perfect. Get those flashcards with all the answers ready.
6. The retrograders.
The close kin of the interrogators, the retrograders are those that bring out the “what ifs” in your whole endeavor. Maybe if you had gone here, done this, tried this, etc. They make you second guess the design, or some minute aspect of the tattoo as a whole. They try to make you self-conscious; sometimes they’re done without thinking, these retrograde comments, but nevertheless take them with a grain of salt.
7. The haters.
We all saw this coming: last but definitely not least, haters. These are the people such as parents, grandparents, older people at church and just those who are simply anti-tattoo. They will say things like, “When you get older how will that thing look?" or “How will you get a good job with one of those on your body?"
There is no reasoning with this mentality; some people simply have different opinions, and you can only hold to your own opinion in a situation like this. Other times though, the haters are friends who just want to get a rise out of you. Usually, this consists of them finding a design that is somewhat similar to your own such as a hat, brand logo, or Pinterest post. They will come up with funny names like “hattoo” or “tatthat”( not from personal experience of course). It gets old quick, but one day when they get theirs, they’ll get theirs.
These are the seven people you will come across after you get your tattoo. They will annoy you, and try your patience, rest assured. But at the end of the day, you finally got the tattoo you wanted, and it is you who, in the end, has be happy with it.
