I had so much luck with "crowdsourcing" last week—I received an education in response to a question about search engine optimization—that it occurred to me to put to the Boots brethren a few questions that have been nagging me for years, but to which I can't find any answers.

The questions aren't communication-related, because as everybody knows, I know everything there is to know about that.

The questions also seem kind of basic on their face, and maybe even dumb. But why can't I find satisfying answers?

Today, we'll commence Dumb Question Week at Writing Boots. I'll pose one question per day—today, tomorrow and Thursday. I'll hope to get answers from you, and if I get no answers, I suppose that'll be an insight of its own.

And in case you'd like to send me your own Dumb Questions for some crowdsourcing help, e-mail them to me at dmurrayil at earthlink dot net, and I'll post them (along with my own stabs at their answers) on Friday.

But first things first:

Dumb Question Number One: What's up with all the tattoos?

When I was a boy, tattoos were strictly for truck drivers and sailors.

I wasn't a boy that long ago!

Now, it seems everybody under 40 has a tattoo, along with a lot of people over 40, including my wife! And we won't even get into piercings, except to remember that Garrison Keillor once said that kids today look like they fell face-first into a tackle box. (And my 80-something dad once confessed that when a waiter or waitress came to the table with a pierced nose or lip, "I just can't help it. I think of cannibals.")

Ten years ago we might have called this body decoration a fad. No such thing. In a few years we're going to have nursing homes chock full very nice, little old doddering tattoo-covered ladies.

My question: In a society that generally seems to make even the most inevitable change with the alacrity of molasses—just ask gays in the military—how does such a basic social more transform itself, apparently permanently, over a decade or two?

In short: What's up with all the tattoos?