Lettering is the new tribal. Great googly moogly, for every beautiful, interesting design I've ever done, I've done "Faith" on the foot ten times. Jeebus, enough already! Nobody wants to read your dumb ass. And my annoyance is only compounded by the fact that everyone who wants these things is a total ninny.
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A young man and his friend walk into the shop and he says he wants "DON'T CARE" on his forearm. I hand him the lettering book. He spends the next twenty minutes vetting each of his choices to his friend and asking if he likes it.
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A young girl asks for "Fearless" in cursive on her back. As I'm setting up, she is wringing her hands, hyperventilating and asking again and again, "Is this gonna hurt? How bad does this hurt? Does it hurt a lot? Am I gonna cry? Is this gonna hurt?
I said to her, "Hey, you're getting the word "Fearless" tattooed on your body, you better start living up to that."
Exasperated, she blurts, "Well, that's not REALLY what that means!"
.....O RLY?
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HE: I want "Balla" on my neck in Old English. How much dat gon' cost me?
ME: One-fifty.
HE: What kin I get for forty?
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A young man comes in and asks for "Bad Boy". He spends a good thirty minutes puking in the trash can after I'd outlined half of the Y.
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SHE: I want a Bible verse.
ME: Okay, where at?
[She draws a line with her finger across the top of her vagina.]
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HE: I want "God's Son" in cursive.
ME: Where at?
[He pushes up his sleeve and indicates a spot above a pot leaf tattoo.]
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HE: I want 'FTW' (Fuck The World) on my arm. Like, up here, so if I have a T-shirt on, you can't see it.
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HE: I want "No Niggers" on my stomach. But write it backwards, in case I have to go back to prison or something.
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CLASSIC: "I want my boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband's name on me. Can you do it really small, in case someday I have to cover it up?
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SHE: Can you fix this? (shows me a long line of blown-out, blurry, scarred lettering wrapping around her leg)
ME: Is that Elvish? (Lord Of The Rings)
SHE: Yeah, it's the beginning of The King's Prayer [or something like that].
ME: Where the hell did you get that done? It looks like crap.
SHE: I know. And I spent three years online researching it, in the chat rooms, on different sites, asking people, making sure I got it translated exactly right. And then I had my friend's husband do it at their house.
ME: What did you do that for?
SHE: I figured, he had the equipment, how hard could it be?
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HE: [showing me a piece of paper with "YOUR NEXT" written in drippy-blood letters] I wanna get this.
ME: Like this, or you want it spelled right?
HE: Um.....I guess this way is fine.
