First Tattoo − 1 January, 1994

I've never been a hugely adventurous person, but one day, after seen a flyer in the commons at school, I decided I wanted a tattoo. I didn't have much knowledge about them other than having family members with tattoos and knowing a couple with them. It isn't like today where I hop online immediately upon having a question about something. I knew enough to where I needed to look for sanitary conditions, but beyond that, I was pretty naive. The flyer was for a place close to the university and they had opened shortly before, so they were offering student discounts. I went and visited, just to get an idea of what I might like. I had narrowed it down to a cartoo character, preferably Disney, but wasn't sure.

I looked at the drawings and narrowed it down to a couple. I came back a few days later and got a tattoo of the bunny, Thumper, from Bambi. I like the tattoo still, but wish I had a better reason for my first choice of tattoos. Thumper was a nickname my boyfriend's roommate had given me because according to him, this boyfriend and I were "always doing it like rabbits". Not exactly a wonderful back story to a permanent mark. But...at least it's cute and it wasn't a name or initials.

I asked Randy to come with me, for support and because I didn't really want my pants pulled down and being alone in a room with male strangers (the tattoo is on my upper thigh).

The tattoo artist cleaned my thigh and shaved the area (I had already that morning, but I'm sure they did it for everyone, regardless). They started the outline. Hmmm...one thing I heard about tattoos was the pain and oh yeah, it hurt. For what it's worth, though, it didn't hurt nearly as bad as I thought it would. I've always attributed the lack of pain to the fact that area has fat, was away from bone and didn't have as many nerve endings. Once the needle started moving for awhile, it really just felt kind of numb.

I think it took about an hour to complete. They covered the tattoo in ointment and a bandage. My next task was to hide it from my mom. Yes, I had just turned 21, but my mom always threatened to disown me if I got a tattoo. I was actually able to hide it for a couple months since the weather was still cool when I got it. How 'bout that....she didn't even disown me when she found out!