PeePee!!

Every once in a while, it’s bound to happen. Your client needs a touch-up. It can be from poor application, improper aftercare, skin reactions, or just less than ample ink saturation in the skin. Regardless of the cause, any artist worth a damn will take care of his clients and back up his/her work, unless obvious signs of neglect are present.
I had a young man come in to get his tattoo redone one day with his girlfriend to keep him company. It just needed a little more red and I wasn’t busy so we started on the project immediately. He was always quick to joke around and was a bit of a goof, so we got along just fine. Mind you, he already sat through the whole tattoo once (about 45 minutes of work) and we would just be doing a quick 15 minute session to take care of the light spots. As the machine started hum-ming it’s long monotone serenade, I noticed that he was having a bit of trouble with the pain. I asked him if he was alright and he smiled and nodded, then relaxed back into his chair. Once the needles touched skin again, he sat back up and cringed a little bit and asked, “Hey, do you mind if we take a quick break?”

“No problem” I turned to set my machine down. When I turned back, he was leaning on his girlfriend with a zombie-esque look on his face. With his reputation as a goofball his girlfriend shrugs him away and tells him to knock it off. Just then, his whole body tenses up and he starts into a small seizure. She FREAKS OUT!! I jump up and brace him and he comes to all bumfuzzled and starts asking what happened. I tell him that everything is cool, this stuff hap-pens, and his girlfriend and I lay him out on a nearby dental chair. Wew, that was close. And not very funny.
We get him something to drink and he soon starts feeling better, still confused about what happened, but says that he is ready to finish the work. As he stands up says “Hey, did you have to throw water me to get me to wake up?”
“Um, no, we just sat you down and you were fine”
“Oh no” he says, “This has happened before. I pissed myself when I blacked out!” Now he is feeling really embarrassed, pissing himself in front of his girlfriend and a shop full of people. I feel bad for the guy, but his tattoo needs to be finished so I ask him if he wants to hurry up and get it done or what he wants to do.
“Um, let’s just do it” he says as he sits back down in his pee-pee pants, but after a few seconds decides that he would rather come back.

Fast Foreword: His girl comes in to the shop about a month later with some other guy. I ask her if her boyfriend wants to get his tattoo finished and she tells me, “yeah, we aren’t together anymore” Let this be a lesson to all of you kids at home, if you are going to pee yourself, don’t do it in front of your girlfriend. (unless she asks you to)

After all this goes down, I finally get a call from this kid. I can tell by his soft tone that he is still embarrassed about the whole ordeal, but he manages to make a small reference to the situation, something to the nature of “I’m sorry about last time, man, I promise not to pass out.” We squeeze in a quick “lol” and start talking about making his appointment.

“Ok, I have you down for next Monday at 2PM, does that sound good?” I ask

“Yup, That works” he says “I’ll be there”

“Alright then.. Oh Hey!......” I asked, Hoping he didn't hang up.

“uh, yeah”

“Make sure you go potty first!!”

Come on, even he thought it was funny. Lighten up.