REGINA – If your body is covered in tattoos, you’re likely to draw some extra eyeballs.
Matthew Shirley, feels his son gets that sometimes too.
“Kids his own age just tend to look at him and say you’re weird, you’re not normal, you’re not like us,” Shirley said.
But eight year olds can’t get tattoos so that’s why dad has them for him.
Shirley forearms read ‘Until the Pieces fit, I will fight you’re fight’
“If I see a parent in a grocery store who is having problems with their child and they see my tattoo’s and they see the puzzle pieces and they see the slogans for autism, they can look at it and go, oh there’s somebody that gets it,” Shirley said.
His outlook is that tattoo’s are permanent, but so is autism.
Saskatchewan’s government funding isn’t the lowest in the country, but it’s also not the highest.
When living in British Columbia, Shirley’s son saw a speech pathologist once a week at school but in Saskatchewan that meeting has only happened once this semester.
It’s because of limited funding in the province.
So Inner-War, a tattoo parlor on Victoria Ave. is hosting Ink4Austim.
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All walk-in clients can choose between nine different autism related designs. The tattoos cost $60.
Typically a tattoo this size would cost around $150. But in this case, it’s less than half the average going rate with fifty per cent being donated to the Casey Foundation.
The Casey Foundation is a local charity that financially supports families with autism.
“I’m hoping to do a hundred today and a hundred tomorrow,” shop owner Armand “Woody” Pelletier said.
Pelletier has six kids of his own and hopes that if any of them ever got sick, or were born with autism that the financial help would be available.
Stuart Ernst is getting a puzzle piece tattoo for his brother.
“I think people could learn more, so when they see someone who’s autistic in public they don’t judge as much.”
His brother who has autism asked him to get it in blue, his favourite colour.
Rebecca Pike is a school teacher and she got a tattoo of a butterfly with puzzle pieces for wings.
Pike said she loves helping children with autism grow and learn.
As for Shirley, he added one more autism related tattoo Saturday, and hopes to raise $12,000 by the end of the weekend.
He said his 8-year-old son may decide to get his own tattoos in the future but for now,
“He asks me on random occasions if I can take them off, so he can wear them to school. He doesn’t yet understand that fact because the tattoo’s that we put on him are temporary,” Shirley said.
Inner-War Tattoos, 339 Victoria Ave, Regina will continue $60 autism designs Sunday April 24th noon-8 p.m. They will also donate half of all regular priced autism themed tattoos to the Casey foundation for the remainder of April.
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