A number of totally out of context thoughts crossed my mind recently, (Which is not to imply that the occupying of my mind by peculiar thoughts is a rarity.) I was thinking that you almost never hear about the kind of things am about talk about.

I often get to wondering how practices that have been around for a long time were invented. A lot of things that seem natural to us now must have, at one time, seemed utterly bizarre to everyone but the inventor. So how did those ideas I am about to talk about pop into someone’s head?

As an aside, I should note that, despite these questions entering my mind, I rarely, if ever, undertake any research to try to find the answers. Doing so would require that I forfeit my "most uninformed person” award.

I cherish that honor. Just to clarify, when I said "most uninformed person” I didn’t mean uninformed in a generic sense, no, it only applies to the matter at hand.

For some reason that I can’t figure out, one of the things that I recently had such thoughts about is how ear-piercing and other body part piercing came about.

There are innumerable activities that, although we couldn’t have known it before the first human tried it, turned out to be only slightly risky, but doing them is still absurd because there is no logical reason to do so.

But I’m not going to talk about those sorts of activities here, I’m sure you are already creating mental pictures of the things I try to avoid. I don’t understand them, but that’s not the reason why I’m going to avoid them in this article.

What level of insanity led them to start and continue doing those activities is beyond my ability to comprehend. And I don’t want to write about many things that I can’t comprehend, considering I can’t comprehend this very one I have tackled.

Back to the topic at hand, body piercing. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how the first person decided to do this.

Did he or she wake up one day and say, "You know, this would be a really great day to poke a hole in my body and stick something through it?” What’s the thought process that would lead to such a conclusion when no one else had considered it before?

And why did other people follow the trend-setter? I can’t imagine that, after watching someone poke holes in his or her body, I would ever be sufficiently crazy to say, "Wow, what a great idea! Why didn’t I think of that? I’m kind of bored and it looks like the thing to do.

Hey Eve (I have a feeling it wasn’t Umutesi or Umutoni because of a number of reasons but the most outstanding one being that, I highly doubt body piercing originated from Rwanda), can I borrow your needle?”

It doesn’t make sense to me. The prospect of pain alone is sufficient to deter me, but, for the rest of you, think about this: It’s not as if our imperfect life over the ages hasn’t provided enough possibilities for infections to invade our bodies.

Now, of your own free will, you want to add a few more. Yeah, piercing your body can cause infections and there is an excellent probability that people back then were very much prone to getting these infections.

Now before someone assaults me mercilessly, I want to categorically make it clear that I’m not in anyway against body piercing. I know it’s even done in the most mind-blowing of ways but still I choose not to care. And make no mistake, neither do I in anyway adore it.

I don’t know where exactly body piercing originated from but the little web research I have carried out shows me it is believed to have started in Rome, with people piercing places like, their ears, nose, naval, etc, but just in case you have the facts, feel free to keep them to yourself. I particularly don’t want to know.

Ends