A father from Canada spent 30 hours getting a tattoo to match his eight-year-old son's birthmark.
Derek Prue Sr says he began to notice that his son Derek Jr, who has a large birthmark on his chest, was becoming increasingly hesitant about taking his t-shirt off at the swimming pool.
The dad, from Stony Plain, Alberta, told SooToday.com, "He was always proud of his birthmark and then I saw he started to kind of cover it up. I think he was maybe a little bit self-conscious about it."
He added, "I was wanted to get the same thing so he wouldn't be the only one. [sic]"
Unbeknownst to his son, Prue Sr went to Juicy Quill Tattoo and was under the needle for nine sessions, which the doting dad told SooToday.com lasted 30 hours.
"I thought it was going to be a one session kind of thing. But three hours turned into about 30 hours. So it's been a bit of a process," he said. "The first sitting, I think, was close to four hours. And I didn't really look to see what was going on."
It was only when the two Dereks went to the pool together that Prue Jr saw his father's matching "birthmark".
"I just kind of took my shirt off. He was wearing his shirt. I showed him that I had the exact same mark as him," said Prue Sr.
On December 10, Juicy Quill Tattoo posted a photo of the father and son with their matching chest marks.
The studio wrote in the caption: "This is derrick Jr and derrick sr. He is the dad that got his sons birthmark tattooed, its Very cool that he could do this to help his sons confidence and that we could be a part of their story [sic]."
The sweet post has so far garnered 224 reactions and dozens of comments.
Facebook user Joe Adams wrote: "Love this, great dad and well done guys for doing this. Top work Al [sic] round."
Another named Amanda Boudreau took to the comments to write: "Awesome!! Saw the story on the news yesterday."
A third, Ryan Byers shared: "Just watching you [guys] on the news. Very Cool."
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