Anna: Welcome to I Forgot My Pen, So I Died’ the only television show dedicated to the stories of real-life individuals who had a small event change their life forever. My name is Anna Marie Jane Tyler-Smith, and I’ll be your host. As always, our show is based on the first victim of life who shared their story with us about how she forgot her pen, which led to her not being able to take notes, so she couldn’t study for tests and failed them, then flunked out of school, so she couldn’t get a good job and the had to live on the streets. You guess what happened next…
Today we will be speaking with Maddy Chuggs, a victim of the ‘mustache tattoo’ trend in the early 2000s. Maddy, can you begin by taking us back to the day of the incident?
Maddy: It was a crisp fall day in early November and I was at Starbucks with my friends. I even remember the taste of the Pink Drink I had that day. We were scrolling through Pinterest when we got the idea. My best friend had been wanting to get an artsy colorful rose on her spine, and I wanted to support her. She was my BFFL and I thought friends were supposed to support each other, but little did I know what would happen next. The tattoo artist, she took advantage of us. She convinced us to get matching tattoos so that we could be best friends 4 life, always and forever. She said mustaches would be in forever. She said everybody would be jealous of us… She lied to us.
Anna: After the incident, Maddy’s parents forced her to pack her bags and skip town. Maddy, would you be able to walk us through how this happened?
Maddy: Of course. This is when my life really got flipped around upside down. After I got the tattoo, everything was okay at first. I wore gloves to hide it from my parents, but when it got infected, I didn’t know what to do. I tried to go to the doctor, but they told me there was no cure for ‘the stupidity that I had’ and I just had to suffer with the infection until it went away. A few days later, I accidentally spilled my iced pumpkin spice autumn chai latte. My shirt, my gloves, everything was wet. I took off the gloves to clean up my mess, and that’s when life as I knew it ended forever. I don’t think I ever heard my mother scream so loud. She threatened to send me away to a school for troubled girls, but I refused. She threw my things out of the window, put my sh*t into a bag just like Charli XCX, and told me to never come back.
Anna: Maddy’s life started to look up when her grandmother offered her a new home, but her newfound happiness didn’t last for too long.
Maddy: My Grandma didn’t seem to mind the tattoo at first. She accepted me for who I was, an autumn Christian girl. I continued going to school, and my infected finger started to heal. I had it really good. That is, until one night, when I lifted up the mustache tattoo to my nose, mimicking having a mustache, and my Grandma let out an audible gasp before she fell to the floor unconscious. Her final words to me were, “You look just like your grandfather. I thought I got rid of him a long time ago. After her death, my life completely fell apart. None of my friends would let me live with them, and someone even started a rumor that I killed my Grandma to get her insurance money for laser tattoo removal. My own BFFLs believed it too. Their parents paid for their tattoo removal, so they don’t have to suffer like I’ve had to suffer.
Anna: It’s been almost a decade, and Maddy is still trying to pick up the pieces.
Maddy: Most nights, I’ll spend a lot of my time in Target or Hot Topic before I get kicked out for the night. My home is a cardboard box, but I just finished decorating it with my favorite blue and pink zig-zag wallpaper. I was almost taken into a local orphanage right after the incident, but they told me my tattoo was too ugly for anyone to ever want to adopt me. Now, I constantly go on job interviews only to always be told the same thing, ‘We don’t usually discriminate based on tattoos, but the mustache tattoo is much too ugly to hire you.’ Recently, I was able to go to the doctor’s office, but I was diagnosed with a rare disorder where, because of my tattoo, I may never be able to escape the 2010s. Even worse, since the mustache tattoo has been on my body so long, it’s likely that removing it could be detrimental to my health and might even cause my body to rapidly disintegrate. I know I made a mistake, and I suffer every day because of the consequences of my mustache tattoo.
Anna: There is currently a fund for Maddy’s laser tattoo removal surgery.
Next week, we’ll talk to Hope Loste, a young woman who’s had to have multiple surgeries to remove the imprint of the galaxy leggings that she wore too much in high school.
Stephanie Tokasz is a grad student studying Entertainment and Media Management who is contemplating a full-body tattoo coverup. You can reach Stephanie at [email protected].