The very thought of it pierces through me...

You know I’ve never really quite got the whole piercing thing. You know the sticking bits of metal into bits of your body – deliberately.

I guess there are some who like to do it to shock people or, well to be honest I don’t really know why, but I know that it never appealed to me.

Not that I’m against it per say, I think people are quite entitled to if that’s their thing, but I never really liked pain all that much and anything that would involve pain being inflicted on me, however short that period of time might be, is something that I try to avoid at all costs.

That’s why for instance blood tests and needles and stuff are not exactly high up on my list of things that I like either and it’s not cos I can’t stand the sight of blood or anything.

I have been unfortunate enough to have to have taken some such tests in the past and while I’m pretty certain I build up the extent of the pain much more in my head than it ever actually turns out to be, it’s still not a thing that I have ever looked forward to with any kind of comforting thought.

Which leads me to wonder why anybody would want somebody to come along and deliberately shoot a hole in their body so they could then fill that hole with a piece of metal that quite often festers into a horrible gooey mess.

And the thing is piercing seems to have gone up a notch or seven since the time when I was growing up and only girls and really tough blokes had their ears pierced.

Of course the really tough blokes didn’t have both ears pierced, they usually had one ear pierced and even then only ever as far as I recall wore a wee gold stud ear-ring.

Unless they were a pirate of course and then they could wear some hind of a hoopy thing, but there were never too many pirates around when I was growing up apart from the odd boy in the eighties who might have sold a dodgy video tape or two.

But anyways by and large it was just the tough guys and the girls who had ear rings. I wasn’t a tough guy and I have never had an ear-ring but I do have eight sisters, about half a million nieces and girl cousins and now two daughters, so over the years I have seen the pain a festering ear ring can cause.

With that in mind I could never even begin to contemplate some of the piercings that seem to be all the rage these days and the pain that they could bring to areas that should never have to be bathed with antiseptic.

And all this came to mind when I saw a guy in a shopping centre in Dublin today with a huge amount of piercings and a tee shirt that said ‘I can’t go through the day without shocking at least one stranger.’

I guess some people might have been shocked, he did after all look as if he had tripped and fallen head first into a box of fishing tackle, but it just caused me to wonder how much pain he had to through to get to look like he did.

And that was before I began to think about the hassles involved – for instance could you imagine getting caught in the queue at the airport screening machine behind somebody like him?

Beep….Beep….beep. “Oh sorry, I thought I had them all, umm you might want to look away for a minute while I umm, ah, umm, ah ok I think I have it….hope that’s the last of them.”

I have always thought it was a pain that I have to take off my shoes and belt going through those machines, but how much of a pain must it be for a guy with so many piercings….and that’s even before any of them begin to fester!