Electric Pigments

For my English course, we spent one class participating in the human library. The human library is an event that consists of stations where you meet people who have dealt with some sort of thing in their life. This is very general, but only because this certain thing could be something like being a community organizer to recovering from a deadly car accident. I listened to several stories from my chosen stations. One particular person caught my attention. I met the tattooed professor. 85% of this man’s body is covered with designs, each one meaning something special to him. From my observation, I saw that he had procedures done on his knuckles, arms, neck, and back of the head. I couldn’t get a good look at all of the visible tattoos, but on one arm he had this abstract design. It looks like one section was overlapping the other. I thought the design was cool. I asked him how much money he has spent on all of the procedures. He replied a ball park of $25,000. Quite the investment… It then hit me that this man is extremely passionate about this particular art form. One thing comes to mind immediately about tattoos, pain. Having a needle inject your skin isn’t the most luxurious feeling. He said some were painful, most were not. One time, he had fallen asleep when going under the needle. How is that even possible! It’s as if his body became immune to getting tattoos. I envy his pain tolerance.

 Most first impressions of a person with that numerous permanent designs is one thing. Bad ass. He also wore ear gauges, so that adds to the assumption. When getting to know him, my assumption lead further and further away from the original. His profession is an economics professor. He said that most people want to take his class because they think he is a cool, laid back kind of guy. In reality, he considers his course to be one of the hardest courses that is offered where he teaches. Another fact sadly surprised me. This man had worked at another place for several years. He had gotten more and more tattoos that were visible. His work place changed their description for the job and had fired him. They fired him because of his tattoos. This was bothersome because his credentials were more than qualified for the job. I guess tattoos come with a price, not only does it hurt, for most people at least. It also has a discriminatory factor. This man is normal like everyone else, he was easy to talk to. He wore a nice suit and tie and was a genuinely pleasant person to get to know. It is too bad that appearances have such a heavy impact in society. I wish I wouldn’t have made assumptions when sitting at his station. He wasn’t this bad ass guy holding an impressive backstory. He is a man teaching economics for college students; enjoying life with just a bit more color.