Do You Still Have Broken Pencil Marks Under Your Skin & Is It Dangerous?
Yesterday my wife got a call from the school nurse. It's not an uncommon thing in our house, let me tell you. She called to inform us that our 13-year-old son was involved in an accident at school. He was accidentally stabbed by a sharp pencil and the lead broke off under his skin. When I got home and heard about this call I laughed, because when I was a kid that would definitely not have been a good enough reason to go to the school nurse. It happened all the time.
Our son was worried if this was going to be a life-ending injury. I did my best not to laugh out loud and told him he would be just fine. I then showed him the three pencil lead marks I still have in my skin 25 years later. My wife chimed in and showed him one that she still has on her arm. Apparently, it was a "Knives Out" elementary school with pencils and we just went around stabbing each other. The 90's were a pretty wild time.
I remember vividly where my worst pencil-in-arm incident occurred. My friend John and I were standing in our 8th-grade social studies class, talking with others in a group. John was clenching his pencil in his land like some type of sociopath with the sharp endpoint out. He quickly turned and bumped into me and lodged the pencil into my wrist. A quarter of a century later, here it still is:
As I assured my teenager, he'll be just fine. It's just some graphite there that has changed the skin color. In fact, the only thing you could really be hurt from is the actual stabbing incident and it becoming infected. So not to worry, it's just a forever tattoo according to Buzzfeed News. Every time I look down at my watch I think of John, clutching that pencil in such an aggressive way. Good memories. Do you have a pencil tattoo?
LOOK: What major laws were passed the year you were born?