Tattoos

The kids made their own “tattoos” tonight.

They’ve been fascinated with them from the very start- their very first one. Those little fake tattoos that come in cereal boxes and the like. The Wife or I would cut them out of the sheet, then the kids would pick the spot to place them on and finally we’d hold a sponge on their arm for awhile. If everything went right, the image would stick to their skin and voila! They had been pseudo inked.

I suppose the ease of the process lent itself to them enjoying it. It quickly became a process they could do with minimal supervision. After a few minutes, there would be a trail of little wet paper pieces on the floor from the table to the sink, multiple sopped sponges would be laying wherever, surrounding the wet pieces of paper were puddles of water and the kids would have pictures of animals and spaceships and whatever on any free area of skin.

So tonight, they decided to kick it up a notch. They wanted to make their own. The asked me how it’s done, but I told them I didn’t know. Then they asked if using wax paper would work.

Maybe? Possibly? How the heck am I supposed to know? I suppose I could’ve googled it, but I had other … motivations at that moment. Like not wanting a massive wet-paper project developing 30 minutes prior to bedtime.

Several minutes later, the squeals of delight made it apparent they’d had some success. It turns out that normal paper colored with marker and then using a soaked sponge will indeed transfer the ink to their skin. After a couple more minutes, they were trying different designs- the boy had an asterisk on the back of his hand, the lass had some kind of … purple blob on the back of hers.

With their process all worked out, they declared that they were open for business. No, really. They want to put a sign up at the top of the driveway advertising their tattoos. They were already talking about ramping up production and the boy was trying to figure out pricing. At one point he commented “They aren’t that good yet, what do you think Dad, are they worth 25 cents?”

All I can say is this planning stage was priceless.

Then, the boy had another thought. Would they have to get permission from “the governor or something like that” to sell tattoos? I tried to explain as simply as possible that they might need to get some kind of license from the government. He was a bit deflated at that point. Good ol’ government, killing free market ideas one at a time…

Then they decided that they could just keep it in the family. That’s when he handed me a tattoo they’d made just for me- a green ‘D’ for my college alma mater. Guess I’ll end up being their first customer.