The Tattooed Kid

I go to a club in the mornings everyday, one good thing possible due to my office timings, everything about work isn't bad afterall. So the club provides facilities of a gym, a badminton court where i am a regular, swimming pool and some other things like carrom,pool, sauna bath and table tennis etc. Though the overall anbience of the place is quite compelling, not to mention the presence of good figured individuals which adds to the temptation, my main concentration is gym/badminton with swimming being an occasional occurence.
So,whenever that occasional occurence takes place i notice a few things which get supplemented by some conversations which i overhear, again occasionally. These are actually doubts which come to my 'now not so innocent' mind.
I see kids... Now this is nothing unusual like 'I see dead people...' in 'The Sixth Sense'... But still, i see tattooed kids. Many kids between the age group of 7-17 are nowadays tattooed, especially in Mumbai. Atleast in this club.. Though i am taking the liberty of calling a 17 year boy/girl a 'kid' while i am writing this blog, it is definitely not the case in real life...I mean 17 year old girl...Come on man i am just 8-10 years older...As per Wikipedia,on 14 March 2010, Saif Ali Khan is 39 and Kareena 29...!!! Point conveyed i guess...
While tattoos on animals are most commonly used for identification or branding, in humans, historically they were used as rites of passage, marks of status and rank, symbols of religious and spiritual devotion, decorations for bravery, sexual lures and marks of fertility etc.
Today, people choose to be tattooed for cosmetic,sentimental/memorial, religious and magical reasons. Still it is fine and all right.
But the point i am trying to convey here is different, just hold on for some more time...
Today, while i was swimming, i saw a kid in the pool, not more than 9/10. From a distance, i could see a tattoo on his right arm. A mickey mouse like tattoo-- Two big ears, colorful costume and stuff. Five minutes later i observed the kid closely, as he was nearer this time...It was not a mickey mouse tattoo.. The tattoo was of a belly dancer, a exaggerated cartoon sketch..Colorful but very short costume and then i realised that those were not 'two big ears of Mickey Mouse' afterall..
Now these things confuse me and some more such incidences add to my misery...
Once while i was resting after an exasperating game of badminton, i overheard the conversation of two similarly aged kids. They were talking about movies and there chat made me reminiscent of my engineering days. It was almost like two second year engineering hostelers talking about Mallika Sherawat.
See, there is no harm in getting a tattoo, but there are ways of expression which should be appreciated and followed...
It is not about a tattoo, it is about the degree of arrogance which can be easily observed in upper middle class kids nowadays... They call each other 'dude' atleast 5 times in a one minute conversation, they are all obese (mostly), they all live on X Boxes and Playstations which have games which are becoming increasingly offensive and they all treat you like sidekicks from a Rajnikant B Grader...
Once a shorty, just a few inches above my knee, asked me, 'Dude!Can i play with your racket for sometime, mine got f---ed. I need to nail the ba---rd who defeated me'. I obliged, but again the doubts popped up.
All this looks fine for an early twenty person, in fact some of this needs to be their in a boy/girl just out of teenage. But for the kids of 7-14 age group, some of this can be eliminated.
Are the parents not aware? Or are they aware but ignore? Or are they aware and are proud?... Or are they aware but can't help?.... Some of them are definitely confused, as this arrogance and offensive body language is often considered to be the hallmark of a smart, competitive kid....

I will stop the philosphical bit here. And while i continue to analyze and look for answers, i will still be happy to see the tattooed kid swimming along me, side by side...!