My second tattoo means a very large deal to me. Growing up, my favorite thing ever in the world was Pokemon. For those of you who don’t know what Pokemon is, it’s a show, video game, trading card game, and much more! It’s about different types animals with powers that fight for fun with their trainers. It started in Japan, but quickly became popularized in the United States. I started watching  it, playing it, and collecting the cards when I was 5 or 6 years old. Around age 14, when I started becoming a stupid teenager, I sold all my cards and video games for cigarettes or some other stupid thing that I thought was more important to me at that age. Around age 18, I started going through some pretty serious personal issues and trouble. Over the next, I needed as much uplifting every day that I could get. I was talking to a counselor one day and they asked me what has brought me great joy in my life, and I remembered how freaking happy Pokemon made me when I was younger. I decided that it was time to start my interest back into it for the sake of my happiness. I looked up Pokemon for the first time in ages, and was astonished at how much it has progressed. I became filled with joy and all I asked for for Christmas that year was all of the new Pokemon video games. I figured it was too late ro restart my card collection, and I certainly didn’t have the patience to start over from scratch. Anyways, that my love for Pokemon in general. My freshman year of college though I realized that I wanted my next tattoo to be Pokemon related. I pondered for months over what to get. Plenty of people have their favorite Pokemon tattooed on them, and plenty of people have Pokeballs (Pokemon capture device) tattooed on them. After quite some time of hard thinking on it, it finally hit me. The original video games were not too high quality compared to today, of course, considering they came out in like 1997. But the first games in America were called Red and Blue version. You played a character named either Red or Blue, depending on the version of course. The gameplay itself is very mundane looking compared to nowadays video games, but back then it was considered the top of the line and I could never set the game down.

Notice the little guy with the hat on? That’s Red, the Pokemon trainer that you play as as you journey the region trying to become a Pokemon master. The guy next to him is a fellow trainer that you can battle to help your Pokemon grow, and those weeds below him hide wild Pokemon which you can either fight and make faint to help your own Pokemon grow, or fight and catch to make them your own! Anyways, I finally figured out that I wanted Red from the very first games as my Pokemon tattoo. Looking at him face on, he looks like this. I went to ‘Parlour Tattoo,’ a  tattoo shop in downtown Eugene, which was highly recommended by a friend. I went in their in May of freshman year and got this little dude tattooed on my chest in between the top of my right pectoral and my right shoulder, just above the armpit. I’m very with how it came out, even though people always love to ask me, “is that mario?” I used to get mad, but I don’t really care anymore because mario is indeed a more well-known older game.