Bad luck
Not me, but a good friend of mine has terrible luck with her various body mods.

A bit of backstory, this friend, who we'll call M (not that she'd ever see this, but she's one of my best friends and I'm paranoid as hell), used to work as a piercer at a local piercing/tattoo parlor. As a result, she gets lovely discounts on whatever she wants. So she has plenty of piercings and tattoos, all professionally done, all for cheap. And free repairs for life, which is a good thing, as you'll see shortly.

M is also a bit of a risk-taker. She used to go to this place called "The Rock", which is just what it sounds like: a big rock overhanging some water. You jump off it, freefall for a while, and get wet. Great fun for anyone who doesn't have a crippling fear of heights (as I do). So she's there one day, jumps off the hightest point (I forget exactly how high up it is, some rediculous distance that would make me contemplate a parachute and a good insurance policy), and lands a bit off. Doesn't hit anything solid, but her new piercing, which is a spiral that involves a lot of cartilege and hasn't finished healing yet, gets yanked hard by the force of impact and tears almost completely out. Cue massive bleeding, loads of pain, and near-unconsciousness. She gets patched up, gets the piercing fixed somehow, and hasn't been back to the Rock since.

Then there was the lovely tattoo she got on the inside of her wrist. The word "fire" (she's a Leo, and rather into astrology) in a neat stylized font that reads the same one way as the other. While that was healing, it was bumped, prodded, scraped, and otherwise abused daily due to her friends not paying attention. I'm guilty as well, she actually kept score and I was, I think, in second place. But the girl in FIRST place, Randi (who's a lying, stealing, hypocritical dramawhore who doesn't deserve anonymity), did the most damage all at once. She got drunk, and M had to take care of her. So Randi, in a fit of drunken flailing, digs her nails into M's wrist and DRAGS. Cue more bleeding and a good strip of tattoo that's rather faded.

But the worst one happened on a camping trip. A bit more backstory, M, myself, and most of our friends are involved in Medieval/Renaissance reenactment, and at least affiliated with an organization called the SCA. Every summer, for about two weeks, the SCA holds an event in western Pennsylvania called Pennsic, which is basically an unholy (but fun) combination of ren faire, camping trip, and frat party. About fifteen thousand people each year come to this thing. You live in a tent, you're in costume and in character the whole time (though most people don't bother staying in character), and the only showers, unless the group you're camping with is rich, are the public solar showers, about a twenty minute hike from where we were camped. You get your own stall, so there's that much privacy, but there's always the little kids wandering away from their mothers and peeking around the curtains to say "hi". Adorable, but rather irritating. But I digress.

So M was in the shower, shaving her legs (for no reason I could fathom, we're CAMPING, and wearing ankle-length skirts or long baggy pants). She recently had a tattoo done on her ankle, a tribal-ish seahorse. The artist had a slightly heavy hand and put a bit too much ink in it, so it had a bit of texture. Not enough to be something to complain about, but still there. So she's shaving, and all of a sudden notices the floor of the shower turning red. She looks down, and sees that half of her tattoo has peeled off, and is lodged in the blades of her razor. She, admirably, doesn't scream or anything, instead she takes the flap of skin out of the razor, SLAPS IT ON THE WALL (she says it was "as a warning" or something. Odd girl.), and stumbles out to get her friends to help her to the chiurgeons (volunteer first aid). I wasn't there at the time, thankfully, as I don't do well with the sight of blood, unless it's my own. She gets back to camp a while later, we all see the huge bandage on her ankle (which is already starting to soak through), and everyone asks what happened. She promptly weaves a tale involving a cougar attack. I, of course, know that this is complete and utter BS (later verified when she told me the real story), but apparently our campmates aren't that bright. Cue everyone gasping and looking horrified and saying how brave she was and asking if they should call animal control or something. To this day, there are still those who believe she lost half her tattoo fighting a ravenous shower-cougar.


I only have two piercings, one in each ear. Insert length/girth joke.
(Morgan is a damn dirty hippie, Sat 2 Dec 2006, 23:45, Reply)