I want her to believe there will be blood

I’m walking my kids to the school bus when Alice asks, 

“Dad, can people be asleep when they get a tattoo?”

“Why would they be asleep?”

“So they don’t feel the pain?”

I see where this is going–and I don’t like it. 

“Oh, you mean an anaesthesia? No, baby, only doctors can give those.”

“Really? Why?”

This will come back to bite me if she ever needs an operation, but now I’m committed:

“They’re super dangerous, a bad anaesthesia can actually kill you.”

“Oh. Ok. And is getting a tattoo that painful?”

“Yeah. It’s terrible. Imagine a needle going into your arm thousands of times. It’s not fast either.”

“Like an hour?”

“Nope. Way longer. Mine took many hours. Some can take days.”

“Alright… I still think I want to get a tattoo.”

“Alice, you’re 8. Why are you even thinking about tattoos??”

“I just think they’re cool. I want to get a witch’s hat, because I really like witches.”

Time to pull out the big guns:

“Did I tell you about the blood? So much blood. Dripping. Everywhere. Sometimes, they have to mop off the floor so nobody slips on it.”

Her face goes pale. 

The conversation stops. 

The bus arrives and she gets on, looking a bit sad. 

I think I’m safe…

For now.

A movie in your mind

I can make that story much worse by removing two half-lines: 

• “I’m walking my kids to the school bus…”

• “The bus arrives and she gets on…”

Without those two lines, I’ve made it very difficult for you to picture it. You can imagine a dad talking to his daughter, but you probably don’t know what we look like. You don’t know where we are. You don’t know if we’re standing, sitting, lying on the floor or doing anything else. The story won't become a movie in your mind.

When I say “walking my kids to the school bus,” though, you know it’s the morning, you know we’re on the street and what exactly we’re doing (if I had said “taking them to the school bus” you wouldn’t). 

Does that mean you’ll picture it exactly as it happened? Of course not. But, as the story starts, you will likely “see”: 

• A memory of being walked to school when you’re a kid

• A memory of walking by yourself 

• A memory of walking your own kids to school (or to the school bus) 

• If you have no kids, or they’re still too little, you might imagine what it would be like to do it

• Maybe it will even be a scene from a movie that you see

(I’m hoping my daughter pictured giant needles and a tattoo studio that looks like a crime scene, that should temper her excitement 😅)

Without those visual cues, you might “hear” disembodied voices but it won’t become a movie in your mind. It won’t engage your visual cortex, which means it will hold your attention less and be easier to forget. That’s not good! 

All you need to do, then, is tell people where you are, and what you’re doing. 

Nothing fancy, just place and action. 

Their minds will take care of the rest 🤘

-Francisco 

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