Eighteen and inked
22.05.12
F or years, Joey Kneisl of Crystal contemplated a design for his 18th-birthday tattoo. After much discussion with his mother, he selected a scorpion for the right side of his upper back.
Mary Kneisl, 42, paid for the ink as a gift for the milestone birthday. She drove her son to Guns N' Needles in Uptown Minneapolis, where she had gotten the most recent of her four tattoos. Joey fought back tears as the tattoo artist worked, while Mary shot video and cheered him on.
"Looking really wicked there, Joey," she said, raising her voice over the tattoo gun's buzz. "You'll love it. It will be worth every minute of the pain."
"I was glad she was there," Joey said. "It felt like razor blades on my back. I'm a mama's boy, always have been."
Four years earlier, Mary Kneisl marked her daughter's 18th birthday in the same way, paying for a pair of intertwined fish tattooed on the birthday girl's ankle.
"I wanted to give them something they'd have forever," she said. "I gave them their birth signs, Scorpio and Pisces. I want to help them write their own story."
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
