MINNEAPOLIS — Local mom Virginia Thompson recently tried to convince her heavily tattooed son that the most punk thing he could do is have far less tattoos on his beautiful skin that is not ruined forever, annoyed sources confirm.
“If punk is all about being different and moving away from the herd, then the way I see it, being completely devoid of tattoos is the daring thing to do,” mused Thompson while looking around the kitchen full of her son’s friends for validation. “In your band, you’re always talking about ‘going against the grain’ and being different. And I’m sorry to say it, but it gets hard for me to tell some of you apart! You kids are all just totally covered in tattoos, and I wonder if there are any of you left who don’t have any. Those would be the true punks, if you ask me. The real rebels are actually the ones that look presentable in family photos.”
Thompson’s son, Dexter “Dex” Thompson, wasn’t shy about voicing his dissent.
“Mom’s full of shit,” said Dex, taking a swig of beer. “She’s hated all my tattoos since I got my first stick-n-poke when I was fourteen and tried to talk me out of getting them for as long as I can remember. Of course she would fuckin’ spin it this way. Next thing you know, she’ll be trying to tell me that it’s ‘real countercultural’ to finally finish my Bachelor’s degree, or that the most anti-capilalist thing I can do is give her some grandchildren while she still has time to enjoy them.”
Monty Smith, a psychologist specializing in the complicated dynamics of the mother/punk son relationship, says this decades-long standoff is par for the course.
“Punk sons are contrarians by nature, and moms are, as the kids say, ‘gonna mom,’” said Smith, using completely unironic air-quotes. “The more she pushed against tattoos, the more Dex wanted them. Of course he ended up covered. That fits the bill for this kind of relationship exactly. The real kicker is–if no tattoos are the new punk, it seems that moms like Mrs. Thompson are, comically, the punks in this situation after all.”
At press time, Thompson was making a hasty appointment to get a small, tasteful piece of flash on her ankle to immediately distance herself from the very punks she accidentally wound up glorifying.