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10.3.09
In Texas recently, a five year old boy shot and killed an 800 pound, twelve and a half foot alligator. He has become a local hero and a legend the likes of Pecos Bill, and Paul Bunyan. Well, maybe not, but that story blows my mind. What was I doing at five? Sure as shit I wasn’t killing monsters. This kid better not get beat up in school for the rest of his life.
“Give me your lunch money, kid.”
“Fuck you, I killed an 800 pound alligator.”
“Shit. Take my lunch money.”
This kid better have prom dates and party invites for life. Puss and booze forever because you killed an 800 pound beast. You, sir, are a badass. As the story goes, he was on a hunt with his old man when he bagged the state record sized monster. I think that story is too bland, so I submit this one. He was on a picnic with his mother and sister when the alligator appeared demanding peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Capri Suns. Young Simon Hughes sprung to action while the beast tried to carry off the women. Simon grabbed a shard of bark from the mighty oak against which he was resting, and hurled the makeshift weapon like a Spartan spear, landing it through the beast’s black heart, pinning it to the ground. Then, astutely, Simon chose to quote “Predator.” Simon said, “Stick around.” There. Isn’t that a better story?
Let’s talk about something nice since recently I’ve just been shitting on every little thing that sails its ones and zeroes past my RSS. As we all ought to know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and though that doesn’t seem like a way to start a rant about something nice, there are some important and moving things going on. If you know me, lend me two dollars for a cup of coffee. Also, you’d know that I hate causes and awareness. I often find the offensive bombardment of ribbons on the rears of cars to be an assault on my right to not give a shit. Awareness really sandblasts my ass too. Cancer Awareness, AIDS Awareness, War Awareness. I get it. We’re aware that these things exist. Your trendy rubber wristband likely won’t cause a stranger to say, “Cancer? Please, tell me more. I wasn’t aware.”
I guess that really doesn’t have the promised sense of something nice, huh. What was I getting to? Oh yeah. Breast Cancer Awareness Month. There are all kinds of things going on to celebrate(?) this terrible scourge on women. You can do walks and runs, you can go to benefit banquets and concerts and sporting events that all throw coin at the cause. One cat is doing something different, and I think we ought to give him a Mystic Mob high five. Ugh. That was terrible. I won’t say that again.
Shane Adair of 5280 Tattoo in Aurora, Colorado is the cat who is doing the something special. Recently, among the thousands of tattoos he has done in his career, was one of firm significance more so than some others. He tattooed one Jaime Brosteun and dawned an idea of support. Jaime’s tattoo was the word “Mom” in pink with a ribbon as the “O.” After sharing her story, including the popular nighttime hospital drama line, “There’s nothing we can do for her,” artist Shane Adair saw that he had a special task ahead. That task was to offer free pink ribbon tattoos for the month of October to breast cancer survivors, or the families of those touched by breast cancer.
Another client of Shane Adair was Reni Soto, who celebrated her fifth year with the cancer by getting the modification. Her mod will include the word “Faith” as a constant reminder of what motivates her to survive. Reni Soto’s mod was also free as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
I am a cynical, sarcastic, life-hating, people-loathing skeptic. Usually. But this scenario warms me and brings a genuine gladness to my traditionally soulless, gangrenous, and festering heart. I am not going to entertain the idea that this promotion will bring attention and business to 5280 Tattoo in Aurora, Colorado. I honestly don’t believe that point even crossed the minds of the giving artists there. I will entertain that these artists are doing something that even they may not understand. Not only are they giving beauty and hope back to these people, they are giving life and control.
I cannot hope to compare, but as a veteran of the endless painful drudgery of the medical industry, I have a context and conceptual point of view that may relate. As a sufferer of a chronic, incurable illness, I understand the personality robbing, faith raping, faceless statistical application that you as a patient become during treatment. You control nothing. Doctors and nurses and specialists all become the concert musicians who play a song for you that you don’t want them to play. It is procedure and appointments and furniture with paper coverings and rubber gloves and once use needles and blood and piss and spinal fluid and backless gowns and cold floors and sterile soap and fluorescent lights and forms and forms and forms and referrals and telling your symptoms and life story over and over and over again to men with clipboards who don’t look up when they nod and say, “Uh-huh.” Living with an illness is personality robbing, shame shattering, and a pure destruction of any semblance of self you may have had. You become an experiment to be poked like a high school biology lab cat. Those cats never have a name. You lose control over the one thing that you ought to always have control of; your body. The artists at 5280 Tattoo are not only giving the gift of beauty in modification, but also the gift of control. A wonderful sense of satisfaction comes in someone holding a needle who is doing what you’re asking him to do, not what you’ve agreed for him to do.
Breast cancer, much like other diseases that degenerate our humanity, is no joke. I have a retardedly high regard for women. They are the perfect thing that God had to make second because he made junk the first time. These are the most important types of persons on the earth because, without them, we have no more persons. Anything that can be done to preserve their existence ought to be done. If you know someone who has been touched by breast cancer, tell that person that she is valuable and important. If you know a mother, tell her thank you for doing what she is designed to do. If you know a woman, treat her properly, and tell her she’s beautiful. Smile at a stranger pushing a baby carriage. Hold the door for a senior citizen. There are women told every day that they will die sooner than their girlish, fairy tale ideas had lead them to believe. A step to the preservation of their lives, and all of our lives, is to tell them that their lives mean something. Tell them they are beautiful. That is a keener way of being aware than any 5K run, donations at a ball park, or pink ribbon can do. Stay beautiful, kids.
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