Saturday, September 20, 2008

You're first!

My wife brought up a good point today: Wouldn't it be awful to be a tattoo artist's first client? Any mistakes are going to be permanent.

I wondered aloud if there are such things as "tattoo colleges" that like barber colleges--you can get a haircut at a big discount, but it might not be perfect.

This brought to mind a larger idea I have been having about physical skill and talent. Take something like surgery or dentistry; these people spend years training for their job and they must have at least a reasonable ability in order to graduate. All of the selective pressures leading up to the point where they actually use their hands are academic, but what really matters in the end is their manual abilities. If they don't have much manual ability, they have so much sunk time and expense that they pretty much have to stick to a profession they aren't much good at.

4 comments:

Surenna P. said...

I would never want to get a tattoo any way!! Ick...It would be there even when your old and it wouldn't be cool!

Trooper York said...

I was once the first person to get a hair cut when a friend went to barber college. She almost cut off my ear.

Anonymous said...

Another factor to think about, as we all become older, our skin droops, dribbles, and becomes misshapen. The face, body, sun, seashell, cross or other objects imprinted in certainly will change shape and be less attractive to look at!

dbp said...

I suppose this would be a reason to not worry about shoddy tattoo workmanship: They will all look like crap eventually anyway.