Needling People - Essay

     When I was young, my mother would direct me away from, what she referred to as the bad element.  This group included people who tattooed and had their bodies pierced, more than the normal hole in each ear for women.  When my mother saw one of these people on the street, she would grab my are and hold me tightly until we passed safely by, as if these people were ally gypsy's or circus freaks come toe steal her little boy and sell him into slavery.  In short, I grew up stereotyping people because of how they looked.

     (A couple of weeks before the start of the fall semester at Ithaca, John moved here from Syracuse.  One of the first things he did when he got here was to register his son in the local school system.  John is a single parent in his mid twenties, with custody of his son.  On the morning he went to the school, he left his son at home.  John is into body piercing and tattooing, and with a stainless steel bolt in his right ear, three holes in the other ear, and several tattoos he looks just like the people my mother kept me away from.  On this morning when he went to the school he had an opportunity to note the reactions of the school officials towards him.

     He arrived at the school in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday while school was still out for the summer.  His first encounter with a school authority came only a few moments after he arrived.  As he was making his way to the front office, John found himself face to face with an angry security guard demanding to know what he was doing on school property.  The security guard, a middle-aged, balding man would not except that John had come to register his son for school.  After threatening to call the police the guard finally agreed to escort John to the main office.

     At the office the security guard and a secretary talked in whispers out of John's hearing for a little while until the secretary told John to have a seat and someone would be with him shortly.  The security guard left saying to the secretary, loud enough for John to hear, that if she had any trouble to just give him a call.  Then he left the room mumbling to himself something about the world going to shit, and any fucken looser having kids these days.)

     Since coming into a college atmosphere I have encountered several people into body piercing and tattooing, and have found them no different from anybody else.  While in the marine corps I even got a tattoo myself.  I don't know everybody's reason for doing this especially with the consequence it brings.  For myself I got my tattoo while I was sober and on my own.  It was just something I wanted to do, and it makes me kind of unique to have something on my arm that nobody else in the world does.  John says that he does what he does because the human body is plain and he wants to be different from everyone else.  From talking with other people into body piercing and tattooing, I think the reasons behind it are pretty similar to mine and John's.  All of them are very proud of what they consider improvements they have made to themselves.

     (After almost a half hour wait in an empty office, the secretary finally called John up.  She handed him the forms she had all the time, and told him curtly to fill them out and leave them on the desk someone would look at them later and if there were any problems, he would be notified.  Taking the papers he started to fill them out. Having a question he went back up to the secretary who was reading the newspaper; her reply to him was that she was to busy to answer his questions and he should read the directions before bothering her.  In response to this John took the papers and left saying he would bring them back filled out tomorrow, the secretary didn't acknowledge.  Leaving the building, John found the security guard waiting to escort him off of school property.)

     It seems to me that this is a common response given by people in authority.  In my own case, although I only have the one tattoo, the marine corps restricted me from certain duties where my tattoo would show to the general public.  This included Presidential security duties among other things.  For most people, however, this reaction comes through as a feeling of being slighted, and the impression of not being taken seriously.  This happens everywhere in the world, even it seems in out very liberal city of Ithaca.