Tattoo

Living as a Korean there are several rules and musts: using honorific to the elders, going to military, having a son, cutting your hair short, and more. However, I grew up in a very unusual family. My two older sisters and I lived a rather comfortable life comparing to the kids in our age. We didn’t have to attend academy or have to cut our hair short. It is not an exaggeration to say that I lived a life that most of the Korean students will envy. Despite the fact that I lived in a very lenient family, my family always followed one rule: don’t do anything regretful.

I was a kid with a distinct philosophy of life, and I did everything to maintain my philosophy. There are three basic principles in my philosophy: do not fight with people who are younger or older, do not marry an older woman, and do everything that I want to do before I get too old. (The second one might sounds too obvious, but I have dated many girls who are older than me, and they are very attractive.) The one I care about the most is the third one: do everything before I get too old. This was my philosophy or in other word, my bucket list. Bungee jump, sky diving, and world tour are some of the common wishes that everyone has. However, what I really wanted to do was to get a tattoo.

At the age of 14, I decided to get a tattoo, but it wasn’t easy to find a place that will actually do a surgical procedure on 14 years old boy. However, I found this one man who actually thought I was 18 or above. I lay down on a bed and he started to assemble his gear. It was rather mind-freezing to think that 18 needles are ripping my cell walls and putting in an ink, but it was too late to stop anyway. The machine started to make a frightening noise and without notifying me, the tattooist started his procedure. The pain was unbelievable, but after an hour my skin started to adjust the pain.

In Korea, it is rare to see a person with a tattoo. This is because many people believe that tattoo is closely related to gangsters. As soon as I got a tattoo; my life changed dramatically. Every single person that I encountered in street avoided me, and it was easy to tell by their face that they think I am unsafe. It got harder for me to live like everyone else each day. My family was deeply disappointed at me, and I got into many troubles in school because of people’s stereotypes thinking that I am the cause for everything bad happening to school. “Are you responsible for this?” was the single most questions that I heard the most in my life.