With the legal age to independently get a tattoo at 18, the smooth lines of ink aren’t something most SHS students can say they sport on their bodies.

Junior Shane Berch, however, has not only gotten one but intends on getting more in the future. As a gift for his seventeenth birthday, Berch convinced his mother into letting him get a tattoo in memory of his father, who passed when he was just four.

Located on the back of his right shoulder, is his father’s name, a dreamcatcher, and the dates of both his dad’s death and birth. The design of the dreamcatcher was modeled after one that his father had given him earlier on in his life, and his tattoo has the same exact colors as the original dreamcatcher and all.

“I just wanted to honor him somehow. The dreamcatcher is one of the only possessions of his that I actually have, so it seemed right,” said Berch. “Plus it was probably the one tattoo my mom would actually let me get.”

As far as how painful the experience was, Berch says he’d go as far as rating his level of suffering a nine out of 10. With tattoos, areas on the body with more flesh tend to be less painful places to have tattoos done, according to wiseGeek.com. Berch says the black ink and upwards progression of his shoulder blade tattoo were arduous factors in the process.

“It hurt a ton,” said Berch. “You kind of just have to mentally leave your body so that you make it through the tattoo.”

That, however, isn’t stopping him from considering getting more as time progresses.

“They are pretty addicting, so I’m thinking about getting one more before I turn 18, and then who knows how many I’ll get after that,” said Berch.