I’m supposed to get a tattoo today. I’ve texted all my friends, “I’m supposed to get a tattoo today, and I’m scared as shit.” I wonder if I will cry. My little brother gave me this gory description of how they stick the needle in a million times, and my mother told me it hurts “VERY” badly. With an extreme emphasis on very. I ponder the question of whether or not she may be biased because she thinks tattoos look like shit…

My father said suggested I wait a day to “think it over.” And of course, I promptly said no, because of my violent teenage angst and impulsivity bursting through its reins like Rudolph swelling with pride when he gets to guide the sleigh.

I am not the type to let profanity spew excessively when I experience pain. With some people, all you hear is “Shit, f***, leggo my friggin balls, Oh god that hurts.” However. I have a feeling that when I enter the tattoo parlor today, I will shed slow silent “sweet” tears, just as my mother relates that I did during my first haircut.

Now let me state that I have done the piercing side of bodyart, when I got my eyebrow punctured. However. That was over in an instant. As I am told by my little brother, the needle goes in “over and over.” It is, according to my him (and my mother), excruciating painful, and I will most certainly cry and embarrass the living f*** out of myself in front of the hardcore tatted up thugs of Mother’s tattoo parlor.

This morning as I walked up to the dingy door for a price quote, I heard the lovely musical sound of “f***s” and “d***heads,” being screeched in a male voice, in reference to a customer who had apparently either escaped without paying or simply ditched an appointment… I stood there feeling akward as hell while the man ignored me and continued to screech to his coworker. I am glad he is not the one who will be giving me the tattoo. I would not want to piss him off; I might end up with a very detailed penis design on my skin.

When I finally got the balls to go in, a slight woman with many skin art designs informed me that I would be paying eighty dollars for a simple paper crane tattoo, which consists only of lines. I had expected to pay perhaps sixty, so it wasn’t too far out of my price range, but I suspect I shall be eating off of the dollar menu quite frequently, as my last paycheck from Walmart is supposed to last me until the end of the summer. The woman informed me that she would “own my forty bucks” (that I had used as a down payment) if I for some reason (such as perhaps the musicality of “f***s” and “dickheads” that I had heard earlier, and would probably hear again was too much for me) did not show up. Well thank you Captain Obvious. Because I really thought these nice people would be kind enough to give me my money back if I changed my mind. Ha.

Now if I can just stand the EXTREME pain, as I hear it told by unhappy members of my family, then I should be just fiiiiine…