The trade was set, one giant snake for some tattoos and other stuff.

---

Looking back on this entire situation paints an interesting picture, so I’m glad that I am getting the chance to share it. The basic idea for the tattoos was simple, just a couple of round circles on the fronts of my shoulders colored red and black. The actual “substance” of the tattoos was a little more interesting.

CREATING MY OWN FORM OF WRITING

Back in high school, I eventually just lost interest. Sure I went to school and got good grades, as I was expected to, but my heart and mind really wasn’t in it. In fact, I was in multiple Advanced Placement classes in my senior year, but I was basically bored.

That said, I happened to create my own form of writing that year. I don’t think that it was a conscientious decision, it’s just what happened. Once I created the actual characters to represent each letter of the English alphabet, I became quite fluent in using it as a form of writing. Basically, I was still using the English language, but just writing a different character for each letter instead of the traditional “ABCs.”

---

To create the characters, I basically flipped each letter over itself, so that the characters were each made up of four of the original letter, just reflected and flipped with the original uppercase letter in the lower left quadrant.

AN EXAMPLE

Here I have written the word “STEEM.” Can you see the original word?

---

When the lower left quadrants are bolded, the original letters are much easier to see and read.

---

If you look closely, you can see that the original letter is just flipped to the right, then to the top, and then to the left, landing upside-down above the original.

---

The original uppercase "A" has been bolded here.

---

Here is an example of the entire 26 letter English alphabet written in this way. Additionally, each character represented a word or concept as well, so they doubled as symbols too. When I would write with these characters, I would separate the words with dots and then end sentences with squares.

BACK TO THE TATTOO STORY

Anyway, this written form of writing was the basis for the tattoos. In the center of each was a symbol, and around the symbol were two words, one in black and one in red. Because of this I had to choose words that had the same number of letters, because they would alternate going around the symbol.

The two sets of words were as follows.

For my left shoulder, I chose FAMILY and MORTAL.

---

For my right shoulder, I chose FREEDOM and ONE LOVE.

THE ACTUAL DESIGNS

The symbol for my left shoulder was centered around the “I” character, which was the symbol for “Power”.

---

On the right shoulder I chose the “J” character, which represented “Individuality” or “the Individual.”

---

Here is a close-up of each tattoo to check out now that you know the “hidden messages” inside each of them.

GETTING THE TATTOOS

I’ll share more about the words I chose and the reasons in Part 3, but I’ll share the story of getting the tattoos here.

Now my time was running out, and I was moving out of New Orleans in days. I was done with work already, and just wrapping things up. Finally I had given ZOOK to the guy and wound up in his tattoo shop ready to get the tattoos.

As life would wind up, a friend of his stopped by pre-tattoo. We had already been smoking some marijuana, but his friend brought another substance over. I wasn’t involved in participating for that round, nor was I asked to. If I had been, I would have turned them down. I can’t recall if it was morphine or heroin… but anyways….

So there I was, about to get permanent tattoos from a guy who was less sober than we had been. At times like these, options are limited. Do I change my mind about the tattoos because the guy about to tattoo me just took some harder drugs and perhaps miss my opportunity to get these tattoos at all, or do I pretend I’m not having any second thoughts about the situation?

Well, you can already see that I wound up getting the tattoos, and I still have them to this day. Not every choice made is a wise one, and I sure had more than my fair share of poor decisions back in the day. The tattoos themselves are certainly not perfect, and they are not exactly positioned in the exact same location… but, life goes on.

---

If you enjoyed what you have read so far, stay tuned for the rest of the story. If you missed Part 1, you can CLICK HERE to check it out!

---

FOLLOW

---

Awesome Handcrafted @papa-pepper logo kindly donated by @vlad - Thank you!!

---

OPERATION TRANSLATION logo provided by @oecp85.

(click link above for more info on Operation Translation)

---

The long-term purpose of this account is to help provide the necessary funds to live a self-sufficient lifestyle at home with my family.