As most people know, there are typically age restrictions on tattoos. They differ by state, but the average age limit (and common sense answer) is 18, and I wholeheartedly agree with that. This state is no different, and anyone getting a tattoo has to show ID before getting in the chair. One evening, three young guys came in and one asked for a tattoo. His friends hung back in the waiting room as he explained to me what he was looking for. I asked him for ID and he began rifling through his wallet. Slowly he turned away from the counter, intently digging in his wallet as if he were drilling for oil. His brow furrowed, he wandered out to the waiting room where his friends sat on the sofa. His back was turned to me, but I could see him quietly mouthing something to his friends. One of them, a smirking, heavyset kid spitting tobacco juice into a plastic cup, mouthed something back at him, then spat with great conviction into the cup. The kid ambled back up to the counter, his fingers still digging in his wallet, and mumbled that he would be right back.
I waited a few minutes, then went to the front door and peeked out. Sure enough, he was in his jeep, digging around in the front seat. I was pretty sure the point of having a wallet was to keep one's ID in there instead of tossing it into your car somewhere. But, hey, I'm old and I can't keep up with what the kids are doing these days. Anyway, he came back after several minutes with an ID in his hand.
"Here ya go," He said breathlessly, as if he had been running. I took the ID and looked at the photo. I looked back at him and said, rhetorically, "This is you?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's me," he answered, dropping his eyes and turning his head slightly away.
"What's your zodiac sign?" I asked. Now, I don't care who you are. I don't care if you think horoscopes are stupid, if you've never read one friggin' horoscope ever in your life, you KNOW what your sign is. Even if you never wanted to know, someone made sure you found out. Like your own eye color, you know what your sign is.
"Uhhh.....he fumbled...March. Uh....March, is, uh....."
I waited, sadistically enjoying his discomfort. This was a trick an old bartender buddy of mine taught me. Nab a kid with a suspected fake ID, you ask them what their zodiac sign is. They've spent hours carefully memorizing and practicing reciting all the information on their fake ID, so when the bouncer asks how old they are, or what their address is, they know how to answer. Ask them their zodiac sign and watch them shit a brick. Gets 'em every time.
"I don't know what my sign is." He said finally. I didn't even have time to say anything before he stammered, "Okay, that's not me, that's not really my ID." Well, hell. Like shooting fish in a barrel and I didn't have time to bust his balls some more.
"Yeah, I know," I said, "and I'm not tattooing you." His friends, realizing that the jig was up, got up off the couch and came to stand behind him.
"Well, I am eighteen," he explained, "I just lost my ID last night, I totally lost it."
"Did you know," I said, in my best aging smarty-pants voice, "that it's actually a misdemeanor to leave the house without an ID if you're over the age of eighteen?"
"Yeah, over eighteen," the kid retorted. Jeez, kid, I thought. Quit shooting yourself in the foot already. I know you're not 18, you don't have to make a neon sign broadcasting it, dumbass.
His fat friend guffawed. "Oh, yeah, well, who carries their ID around with them all the time? Do YOU do that?" He scoffed, gesturing crudely at me with his spit cup and rolling his eyes incredulously, if I had just insisted Santa Claus was real.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do," I shot back, scowling. "Especially if you're going to do something like drive a car? You know, you can lose your insurance, or your car over that, or even go to jail."
The kid with the fake ID looked scared. It was time for his gelatinous friend to step in and save group face. I could smell the adolescent testosterone bubbling up like Jed Clampett's crude. Tubby scoffed again and said, "I'd like to see someone try to do that to me, I'd punch 'em in the face!"
I suppose my reaction was expected to be an enthusiastic agreement and high-five him for his anti-authoritarian posturings. Naturally, I did not. "You'd punch a police officer in the face? I'd like to see that."
"My dad is the police," he replied, a notch less on the tough-guy scale, bringing the cup hesitantly to his lips.
"So you'd punch your father in the face. Not likely"
He looked perplexed and unsettled. He spat in the cup and his eyes darted about. "Yeah...."
I smirked. "Have a good night, gentlemen." My outstretched arm indicated the door, and my desire for them to exit through it. They did, obviously cowed by the experience.
The sad irony of the whole thing is, if he would have pulled out the ID and handed it to me without a fuss, I would have glanced at the date, handed it back to him without much thought, and gotten his release form ready. The kid in the photo looked reasonably enough like him that, if I had no real reason to suspect, I wouldn't have. But I knew from all the ado and bumbling and fidgetiness, he was staving off the "no" he would get if I busted him. I knew this because I used to do the same thing as a youth, nervously pacing in front of the liquor store before I went in, bracing myself for what was sure to be a perilous gauntlet. Or else I'd spend all day digging in my pocket for my ID while the annoyed clerk looked on. Or I'd go toss the interior of my car, DEA style, as if I had no idea where my ID was. I knew, I was just afraid of what was going to happen when I handed it over. For trying so hard and spending so much time figuring out ways to procure contraband, kids sure do fuck it up as soon as they get a chance.
The kid called back the next night and asked for the same tattoo, and asked if it was okay to come in. I asked him if he had his real ID this time. He assured me he did, then told me he had completely lost his ID and went and got a new one. He never showed up and I'm not surprised. In retrospect, I shoulda challenged that fat kid to call his cop daddy down to the shop so he could punch his pop in the face. Then I woulda informed dad that we had not only an unlicensced driver, but also a minor with a fake ID, attempting to perpetrate a fraud. I'm trying to imagine the look on that snotty punk's face if I had said it. But....I've cleaned up enough shit on the job as it is, I didn't need to do it again.
