The Ask Reddit sub deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. If it weren’t for its random questions for and glorious answers from the children of porn stars and other curious corners of human society, there’d be no peace on earth. Yet another case for the Swedish Academy’s consideration appeared this morning when Reddit user tandada asked, “Redditors who remove tattoos for living, what are some of the weirdest/funniest tattoos you had to remove?”
Redditors obliged with tales of their greatest customers and their most gloriously horrible tattoos. Like the person who decided religion was a private matter:
Star of David Tramp Stamp
Lots of entries continued the religious theme, especially when it concerned former believers whose previous decision to turn their body into a temple made less sense with age:
My dad did some marketing work for a dermatologist on his laser tattoo removal service. He told me once that this guy came in to get a cross removed because he became an atheist.
Stories of sports fan tattoos are almost always involved, especially when faulty predictions are involved:
New England Patriots Super Bowl Champions 2008. I’m a Giants fan.. it was awesome
Then again, sometimes the tattoo itself wasn’t a bad choice or an embarrassingly terrible design. Like the man who lost one of his fingers, resulting in a drastic reinterpretation of his knuckle tattoo:
My dad told me a story of when one guy came in to get it removed.
His name was Gary and had gotten his name tattooed on his knuckles. Somehow, he lost one finger (not sure to what).
You guessed it, the finger he lost was the one with the R on it, so now his tattoo said GAY.
Many users pitched in with stories about friends and family whose past mistakes and drunken escapades were either (a) still around, (b) in the process of being removed, or (c) here to stay. For example, there’s the inappropriate uncle everyone has:
My uncle had a naked lady tattooed on his calf. When he finally “settled down” and had a kid, his wife didn’t like him going out in public with that naked lady showing.
So he would sharpie a bikini on her.
He finally got around to getting a bikini tattooed on, but jesus it was funny to be walking out the door to go somewhere and suddenly hear “wait wait wait! Sh*t” and have to stop while he sharpied his leg titties.
Or the hopeless romantic who tattooed his ex-wife’s face on his person:
A couple of years ago, my mother and her ex husband got divorced, he chose to get her face tattooed on his forearm to try and get her back and show how much he loved her.
It was a terrible portrait and he’s still getting it removed to this day as far as I know, definitely weird.
However, the best contribution of all came from RawrImABigScaryBear, a Redditor with many interesting artistic choices in semi-permanent body art:
I’m pretty much the king of stupid tattoos, but to date, I haven’t had any removed.
I’ve got a carebear with “hug life” tattooed on his belly, a ninja hiding in my armpit, a squished vw bug on the bottom of my foot, a koala drinking a cup of tea and giving a thumbs up with a banner that says “koala tea guaranteed”, a cat dressed like tupac (tupaw shapur), another cat dressed like a devil playing with a ball of yarn (lucipur) and a bunch of other dumb ones.
To prove his point, RawrImABigScaryBear offered photos as evidence. His greatest hits include the “Hug Life” carebear:
The punny koala:
The devilish feline, Lucipur:
And the chief of awesome bad tattoos, Tupaw Shapur:
The thing is, these tattoos are amazeballs! The first response to this portion of the thread said what everyone else was thinking:
I fail to see a single dumb tattoo in anything you described.
Seriously, RawrImABigScaryBear — do not remove any of these amazing tattoos. If anything, I think you posted these photos in the wrong Ask Reddit forum. Plus I’m pretty sure any tattoo removal professional you’d try to go to would refuse to service you — these are just too amazing a gift to humanity to etch away forever with a laser and a few repeat sessions of pain.
Via Reddit