Derek Prue is 8 years old and was born with an angioma, a large “port-wine stain” on his chest, so large that he even bathed wearing a shirt so no one would see it. His dad noticed. And instead of just comforting him with words, he decided to do something no one expected.
He got an exact replica of his son’s mark tattooed. Thirty hours of pain, spread over six or eight weeks, in an area of the body full of nerve endings. Derek was playing in a hotel pool in Canada when his father called him over from the edge and showed him his chest: “I was happy and a little confused. I didn’t know he was going to do it”, the boy told CBC.
The tattoo artist charged him for only four of the thirty hours of work, because to him, drawing a smile on a child’s face should not cost so much. Today, Derek has already promised his mom that he will take off his shirt when his dad is nearby. After all, now they both have the same mark forever.
