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Tattoos; we has them. About a year ago Jon and I came up with an idea for a small tattoo. It was something unique and special to us as a couple. Our friend, Pili, who is an artist, and has several tattoos offered to draw them on us. She did, and we liked them. They wore off, and we had her draw them on us again. They wore off, and we missed them. She drew them on a third time and again we missed them when they wore off. Then we put the whole idea on the back burner so we could think about it.

These were all steps that our friends with tattoos recommended to us.

1. Start with a small tattoo. Main reason for this is to see if you can take the pain enough to get that larger design you’ve been dreaming of for years. Say you get a one inch crescent moon tattooed on your leg, and it hurts so much you never, ever, want to have another tat done. Great. In the middle of that epic back piece of the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo that covers your entire back is a bad time to discover you can’t take the pain to finish it. You’d have this half finished ink on your back forever. Start small see how your pain tolerance holds up.

2. In a place that is inconspicuous for the first tat.

2. a) If you work in a conservative job, or might someday then get a tattoo where short sleeves will cover it on the arm, and a skirt or shorts will cover it on the leg. Anything below the elbow or the knee is much harder to cover up for work. (Think oh, no, my job is cool with tattoos. Will you have that job ten years from now? Will the next employer be cool with tattoos)

3. Have an artist friend draw it on you so you can wear it for awhile. We had some other tattoos drawn on that just didn’t work. So glad it was only temporary and not permanent.

4. Have it drawn on you more than once to make absolutely certain you want the design and you want it’s placement exactly there.

5. Tattoos are forever unless you want costly and not always scar free laser tattoo removal. Tattoos are forever. Forever is a long time to have a tattoo you hate, or a badly done tattoo.

6. Which leads us to find a tattoo artist you trust to do the design you want. Do not, repeat do not, go into a tattoo shop and hand your carefully thought design over to a stranger whose work and talent you are not certain of. Sometimes this works out, but most often it does not. Let me repeat tattoos are forever. Shop carefully for your artist. (Our artist did the shoulder piece for our friend, Pili) So we knew he could handle a small, rather simple tattoo. But as much as we like her tattoo we would not have signed up for him to do the two larger pieces I want (ed) down the road. He drew beautiful flowering branches on her that flow down her arm and look lovely. The pieces I want (ed) are not flowers and pretty trees. Hey, it’s me did you really expect pink blossoms? Which brings us to the next point.

7. Just because a tattoo artist did a kick ass job on your friend’s tattoo doesn’t mean the same will happen for you. Check the artist’s portfolio before hand. If they don’t have a few years worth of work to show you walk away. You do not want to be someone’s learning experience. (Yes, I know I have one friend where that worked out and he has this great tat, but why play the odds when you can find an artist that actually has a track record that you can leaf through) Your friends great tattoo may be the best thing in the artist’s portfolio, if it is, walk away. One lucky tattoo in years’s worth of work is not good odds.

7. a) Just because this artist did a great job on your friend’s flower and vine shoulder cap, does not mean they’ll do a great job on the portrait of your beloved dog. Does this artist have any dog tats in his portofolio? Were any of them taken from people’s actual pets? If there are no dogs in his portfolio, then find an artist whose done some and done them well, if that’s what you’ve got your heart sat on. The same applies to getting that swallow tattoo if the artist doesn’t have a bird in his portfolio then find one that does birds.

8. Avoid the traditionally painful areas for your first tattoo. Any place directly over bone, on the back over the kidneys, inside of thigh or arm, especially high up on the inner thigh, base of spine for some people, top of spine for others (Yes, I know people who have had no trouble with any of those spots, but I know more than three that have had trouble with each spot. I’m taking majority vote on the pain locations.)

9. Does it hurt to get a tattoo? I actually have quit a few friends with tattoos, some of them quite close friends, and they all had varying answers. The majority said either the pain endorphins kick in and it doesn’t hurt for long, or it didn’t hurt, or it hurt, but not badly.

9. a) My friends are all lying bastards.

Jon and I both agree it not only hurt, but it hurt a lot. It hurt from the first needle prick to the last. Carri and Pili said that our tattoos weren’t big enough for the endorphins to kick in, that under twenty minutes it’s just all pain for a lot of people. Now they tell us. There is some validity to the endorphin reasoning. I know when I ran for miles that the two miles or under and it was just grinding work, but between three and four miles the endorphins did kick in and I would experience a runner’s high. I’m told that can happen with tattoos, as well.

9. b ) But some people never have endorphins kick in during a tattoo. It just hurts the entire time. There is a very real chance that Jon and I fall into this sad catergory. Being told there’s no way to know until you try something bigger and of longer duration is not the kind of logic that’s really going to win us over to a second tattoo.

Are we happy we did it? Yes. Are we happy with the tatoos? Yes. Are we planning our next tattoo? No. Is this our last tattoo ever? Probably. (I would just say no here, but friends warn us that tattoos are addictive and to never say never. Of course, these are the same lying bastards that said it didn’t hurt that badly so take it with a huge grain of salt.)

Here is the picture of our very first, and maybe only, tattoos.