Down here, tattoos are stereotyped, and it's bad.

Hello, everyone.

Trust me, arts are a lot of words in one piece; those words we find very difficult to articulate can be put together as art and make it make more sense than it was even supposed to make as words. Every piece of art carries a lot of information; sometimes many people fail to see this information, whereas those who are able to decode this information always appreciate the beauty of art and its existence. Sometimes a message can be right before you in the form of art, but you won't get it until you take your time to look at it and try to understand it. I'd really love to have a tattoo someday, but a lot of things stand to discourage me.

_{designed in canva.}

Art is one of the very few things that did not fade away with time; instead, it continued to evolve and fit into every era. From the days of old to date, art has always found its way to fit in, and it is very remarkable to see how it keeps evolving and not giving people the chance to make it a thing of the past. It evolved into a lot of varieties, from paintings (body arts, portraits), sculpture, and monuments, and today we have digital arts too, and the world is moving towards a digital world. This simply means that arts have already marked it place in the digital world and is never fading.

It is funny how in my community and region, tattoos and body arts are stereotyped. Anyone seen with any form of body art is already stereotyped to be nothing but someone involved in illegal activities or just a very bad person, and such a person should be avoided. I see people with tattoos, and I cannot help but admire them and wish I could have mine too someday, but when I remember how everyone sees those with tattoos, I feel discouraged. Down here, whenever things go wrong, because you have a tattoo, you are already a suspect, and they don't need much evidence to convict you. Even if you are a kid lover, you won't get to be a kid lover anymore the moment you decide to have body arts, no matter how small they might be, unless those kids are yours, as parents will do everything possible to stop their kids from coming anywhere near you.

When my dad was away for a very long time on an assignment, my mom decided that we move to a different state and live with my uncles there. They had a neighbor who had tattoos all over but was a kid lover. The very night we arrived in Kano State from Yobe State, the first thing my uncles told us was to avoid the man with a lot of tattoos, as they don't trust him and don't want us anywhere near him. We, as kids, took the advice, or should I say warning, very seriously. We only greeted him, and due to the warnings, we became scared of him. We let him see that we were scared of him, but it did not stop him from wanting to draw us close. Whenever he goes to work, he comes back with snacks for us, but we always refuse his snacks as instructed until a day my mom was around when he brought those snacks, and she told us to accept the snacks.

He lives alone, and we were left wondering why. My mom asking us to accept the snacks was like a go-ahead to forget the warnings we got earlier. Through us, he became close to my uncles, as they too saw that he was not what they took him to be. He loved us like his own and welcomed us. Every night, they sit outside to have a conversation, and we hang around and play like we are not listening. Though the doubt about the type of person he really is was still there because of the tattoo, his personality was totally different from the picture of him they painted because of his tattoo.

_{designed in canva.}

One day he opened up about how he lost his wife and two kids in a ghastly accident, and the tattoos on both his arms are a picture of them to remind him of them every day. He had digits on his hands too; they represent the day they died, as only one kid died at the spot. The wife and other kid tried to fight it but later gave up on the fight. This taught both my uncles and mom a lesson: so many tattoos have meaning and are not all drawn just for fashion. Don't stay at a distance and conclude about a person just because they have a tattoo.

_{This is my entry for day 24 of the InLeo monthly prompt. You can join by clicking the above link.}