A dyslexic teenager to got 'left' and 'right' hand tattoos so she can learn to drive. Amanda Morris, 36, was quoted between £80 and £120 when she called tattoo parlours asking if her daughter, Alexis, 16, could get ‘L’ and ‘R’ tattooed on her hands.
Alexis - who has dyslexia - has never been able to tell left from right and was finding it impossible to learn to drive.
Amanda - who is also mum to Noah, 18, Harley, 14, Danny, 11, and Riley, nine - messaged tattoo artist Scotty Jr. Thompson on Facebook asking for a quote.
Scotty, 30, said he would do the job for free - and completed the inking on April 9. Stay-at-home mum Amanda said Amanda used to draw the letters on her hands at school and always said she wanted tattoos when she was older.
Amanda said: “I was totally OK with it, I thought it was a great idea and I’ve got several tattoos myself. I came across Scotty’s page on Facebook and messaged to ask him how much he would charge and he said ‘how bout free’.
“I’m like ‘wow, OK’ so he messaged me to ask if we could do it on Easter Sunday. So, we met him at Easter, and he was incredible.
"We were in and out of there in less than 20 minutes probably. He reassured Alexis all the way through.”
Scotty - who has been a tattoo artist for 15 years - said: “It was a tattoo that literally took me longer to set my equipment up to do it than to do the tattoo. I felt like people were taking advantage of this lady and her daughter and it had me thinking: 'Man, there’s no way that I’d pay that for a five-minute tattoo.'
“It was the first time I had ever done an L and an R. I was a little bit confused because I didn’t know a whole lot about dyslexia before.
“But I let Alexis pick any L and R she wanted so it would make sense to her when she sees it. You can get some unusual requests for stupid stuff you know people are going to regret like couples’ names and they know they’re going to regret it.
“I have given people free tattoos before, covering up self-harm scars and old, bad tattoos that they had 20 to 30 years ago. God will tell me to take care of somebody like I did.
“But I had no idea I was going to get the traction it got. I’ve never had anything like that happen before.“
Alexis has not passed her driving test yet plans to book a date for it by the end of April. Amanda added: “She finds it really useful now.
"She’s not talked about getting any more, she really just needed the left and right because she literally can’t tell her left from her right.
“If you say ‘turn left’ she just stares straight and says ‘you need to point, I don’t know where to go’. Now she has it on her hand she can just look.
“It has helped her confidence a lot and she’s getting better at driving all the time. She feels much safer on the road not only for herself but for everyone around her too. It affects every day little things in her life as well. It affects her reading quite a bit."
