My first tattoo

I loved tattoos when I was younger. I remember seeing people with them and thinking how awesome these people looked. I was probably about 6 when I first started noticing people with them and right away I got hooked on those little transfer tattoos which I’m sure loads of people had when they were kids.

None of my family members had tattoos at the time so this obsession came right out of the blue. I decided I had to have one, but wasn’t sure I could take the pain and there was also the fact that I fucking hate needles. If I couldn’t stand the pain then I was never going to be able to look like these heavily tattooed people that I aspired to look like, so the only way to find out if I could take the pain was to man up and get one. The only problem was I was only 12 at the time of these thoughts.

One week after my 14^th birthday I decided to apply the same tactics to getting a tattoo that I had previously used to getting served in pubs. This was a complicated process that took months to plan out and… I’m just kidding it was simple. Shave my head and grow a beard. So that’s what I did I walked boldly into a shitty little tattoo shop in my home town and got a small tattoo on my hip, just to make sure I could take the pain. As it turned out I could and now 8 years later I am covered in the damn things. But I always remember the angst of the first time I walked into a tattoo shop. Most people who get tattooed under age get a friend of a friend or some two-bit scratcher to tattoo them, which is an experience I have never had.

I still have the tattoo and have no plans to cover it or get rid of it, but I don’t recommend getting tattooed that young and especially not by some guy who is tattooing out of his house and hasn’t got a portfolio of work that you can look at.