Nunzio Blonde still remembers what the tattoo looked like.
A dashed line around the man’s left leg. A pair of scissors. The words “cut here.”
Definitely not a request Blonde had gotten before.
Matt Freitas made the phone call to Skin Deep tattoo shop on a whim in summer 2021. The shop doesn’t often offer same-day appointments, said the man on the other end of the line, but they could squeeze him in.
When Freitas explained the design he had in mind, the man seemed confused. But when Freitas walked in that afternoon, it all made sense.
The tattoo lines up with where doctors amputated Freitas’ right leg following a car accident on Jan. 4, 2013. By pure coincidence, Freitas had scheduled his appointment with Blonde, whose left leg had been amputated in 2019.
The experience, Freitas said, was “transformational.”
“For a lot of people, it's really difficult to ask questions,” Freitas said. “Because, I mean, you're walking down the street and you see somebody with a prosthetic leg. What are you going to do? Go say, ‘Hey, how'd you lose your leg?’ That's a scary thing to ask, even if a lot of people like myself are more than happy to answer. And so I got the tattoo as a way to give people that in.”
Losing his leg at age 11 could have been the end of Freitas’ lacrosse career. Instead, it pushed him to work harder — to go all in. He’s not only the starting goalie and senior captain at Williams College, but he also runs a lacrosse nonprofit called A Shot for Life, coaches at a summer camp for kids with limb differences and even competed on “American Ninja Warrior.”
“I maintain to this day that I don't think I would play college lacrosse if I hadn't lost my leg,” Freitas said. “Not that I didn't love the sport — I just frankly don't think I would have been good enough. Because I never would have had the work ethic to start lifting, start playing more competitively, try and make a club team, or try and compete against the best.”