TIFU by tripping over my backpack and stabbing a pencil into my foot.

Submitted by filterpiece23 t3_11ykftb in tifu

Obligatory this didn't happen today. This happened 10 years ago, almost to the day. I'm always reminded of the incident by my parents of sharing the image of my foot with the pencil in it every year through Facebook memories.

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I (15M at the time) am not a real tidy person. My room is constantly messy and it's a real bad habit I need to fix up. I consistently leave things on the floor of my room, including my school backpack. In fact, for this fuck up, I was also dumb enough to put a pencil point up into the little pencil holder spot of my backpack.

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When the fuck up happened, it was about 11pm. I was struggling to get to sleep, probably watching YouTube on my tablet or something. I decided to get up to go get a drink of water. So, I get out of bed, walk a step or two towards my door, then it happens. On my next step, I trip over my backpack, and instinctively push my foot straight down to catch myself from falling.

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I hear a little sound. Not sure if I can describe it since I haven't been stabbed with anything since, but definitely a stab sound. And also, a crack. I fall to the ground and my foot hurts, so I look at it, and I see a little nub of the broken pencil just sticking out of my foot. That's when I go into a bit of shock. My parents, luckily for me, heard me fall over and rushed to my room. They ask me, "What happened?" and I can only utter one word.

"Pencil"

That's when they notice the little nub. So, they call 911 and the paramedics take me over to the hospital, where I get some X-Rays on my foot, and find out that I was "lucky enough" to not do much damage and found the meat of my foot with the pencil. That was also the day I found out there are a bunch of nerve endings in the foot and that I could have done some real damage if I didn't find this particular spot of my foot to stab the pencil through. So, with no real damage done to my foot, the doctors determine that a surgical removal of the pencil was not necessary, and instead basically just pulled out a pair of pliers and pulled the pencil out of my foot. That hurt. That was also the first time I saw how much pencil was in my foot. If I had to guess, it was probably a couple millimeters from going all the way through my foot.

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To sum up the most boring part of this, I get a tetanus shot, I leave the hospital, and was on crutches for about a week while the hole in my foot eventually fuses back together.

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My favorite part about this story happens about 3 months later. For context, my brother had seizures semi-often. He's been medicated now, and they're a lot rarer. One of the times I was babysitting him, he had a seizure. With this being the first time I had to deal with one all by myself, I had called 911 and paramedics came over to our house. These were not the same people that helped me on my night of need. My dad had also come home in that time. After they checked on my brother and made sure he was okay, we were talking to the paramedics, and the topic came up of the last time we had to call 911, which was my pencil incident. One of them goes, "I heard about that!" and we all had a bit of a chuckle.

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This is pretty much laughed about to this day. I have a little scar on my foot where the pencil got inserted, and I still have the pencil somewhere too. I should really find it.

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TL; DR: Tripped over my backpack, got a pencil to go almost all the way through my foot, and apparently was the talk of the paramedic town for a little while.

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cantareSF t1_jd8dzd7 wrote

I used to think I rated by having caught a [smaller] toenail on a running shoe sole at 3am, thus ripping it completely off with bloody aftermath.

But with this here SAT-approved sharpened-#2 self-impalement, you have clearly surpassed me in the footrace to TIFU hell.

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timotioman t1_jd8e51l wrote

You should definitely get a pencil tattoo

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phalangepatella t1_jd8gtpw wrote

I somehow stabbed myself in the meaty part between the thumb and forefinger with a pencil when I was about 10 or so. The lead broke off deep in my hand.

For some reason, nobody ever did anything about getting it out, and my hand eventually healed over it. It’s still there to this day, decades later and you can faintly see it.

And before the comments start… it’s not actually lead; it’s graphite. My body never showed any sign of infection or rejection. It’s just there…

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AcrobaticSource3 t1_jd8ucbu wrote

Yet another reason to go digital. You won’t stab your foot with a pencil anymore! (You might impale yourself on your WiFi set up, tho)

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red_fish_blue-fish t1_jd8zvja wrote

Ouch. I left a binder out, tripped and fell on the ting and now I have a good sized scar in my hand with the little triangle from the pronged rings and a big scratch. I broke the binder.

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gerhudire t1_jd912r4 wrote

Went to school with a guy who got stabbed in the hand with a pencil, he was rushed to the ER. The person responsible was kicked out of the school and from what I understand, he never went back to school.

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Kamendae t1_jd91dyp wrote

My uncle stepped on a toothpick once. NBD, they pulled it out, he was fine.

SIX MONTHS LATER, a small piece of toothpick that had broken off inside his foot made its way out the top.

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Foodcity t1_jd91w4b wrote

Oh cool, someone else who's done something similar to me! I kicked a stick, and the stick decided to stab me from the inner-side of my foot! Them cleaning that out with alcohol HURT LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER!! That and the numbing in like, 20 separate injections, to give me stitches.

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TheOnlySneaks t1_jd97hqu wrote

I can relate. In grade five, I stepped on a toothpick. It almost fully went in and it gave me a decent limp for the next three weeks. It happened three days after my brother's fingernail accidentally cut my eyeball. Having a distinct limp and patch on one eye in grade five is a surefire way to become a pirate in everyone's eyes. Some people thought I was a kid pretending to be one. :/

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Lewca43 t1_jd9fe6w wrote

I still have a tattoo from pencil lead poking through my backpack and into my leg when I was in elementary school. Didn’t break, just wrote under my skin.

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advancedaging t1_jd9gvdy wrote

Ya know modern medicine is great, if this happened in the 1700s or earlier, that pencil very well could have killed you

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LC_Anderton t1_jd9klzq wrote

My 13 old daughter came downstairs one night while the boss and I were sat chilling in the kitchen… daughter has Asperger’s and consequently has an insanely high pain threshold (don’t assume all ASD people have this… things could go south really fast if you try and test it 😏)

She said “there’s a pin stuck in my foot” and lifted her leg to show me the underside of her foot. Sure enough, there was a thumb tack, fully embedded in her foot.

Terrible parent that I am, because of her calm demeanour and matter-of-fact approach to being stabbed… I started laughing… and to my eternal shame, I must confess,somewhat hysterically 😏

The boss, not impressed with my somewhat less than empathic reaction to my daughter’s plight, took her out from the kitchen, to sit on the staircase, where the natural light is better.

No.2 Daughter dutifully raises her foot at mummy’s request… and the boss sees what she thinks is a small, circular sticker… so pulls it “off”.. except it’s not “off”, it’s”out”. Because it really is a thumbtack.

The result is a spurt of blood from the hole…

Wife re-enters the kitchen (leaving child on stairs) and says… “It’s a pin…”

I said “I know…”

Boss says “I pulled it out and blood spurted out…”

I said “ So what did you do?”

And the boss replied… “I stuck it back in the hole to stop the blood coming out”

First Aid 101… 😂

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SweatyFormalDummy t1_jd9le29 wrote

I’m four to grade we had a kid who was notorious for swinging on his chair. He was the only one in class that would continually do it even if the teacher told us not to. One day, he went too far back and his thumb broke right at the big knuckle part (name? Idk) that connects it to the hand. Luckily, they were able to give him laughing gas and pop it back into place. Kid you not, next day, he was back swinging on his chair again. 🤦🏽‍♀️

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CancelGrouchy2469 t1_jda2eui wrote

When I was about that age, I was similarly lazy when it came to cleaning my room. I had gotten a package in the mail in a cardbox box, and never got around to removing the empty box from the floor of my room. One night I'm getting ready for bed, I had just taken a shower and was walking back through my room, barefoot, obviously. This empty cardboard box was in my way, so I gave it a sideways kick with the side of my foot as I walked past, and somehow I caught it at just the right angle that the edge of the cardboard SLICED into the side of foot, and I ended up with this huge gash in my foot, from my toe back down to my heel. I was freaked out, not so much from the pain or blood, but because I couldn't figure out what I did. It felt like I'd ran my foot across a razor blade or sharp knife, and not the edge of the cardboard box. So I hobble back to the bathroom, blood pouring out of my foot, and call out for my parents. So they and my brother are awake now, trying to figure out wtf I did to myself, while I'm trying to get my foot to stop bleeding with towels and washcloths. Eventually we decide I need to go to the ER for stitches, and the doctor there also can't believe this was all due to a cardboard box. To this day I have a shiny white scar along the side of my foot, and I'm now much more responsible when it comes to cleaning my room.

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BreDenny t1_jdam8bn wrote

This reminds me of when my sister stepped on a 2 inch thorn. Parents didn’t take her to the hospital and instead spent an hour with a screaming child (under 10 but I don’t remember exact age. 6-7?) and pulling it out. TIL she’s very lucky it didn’t permanently damage her foot

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FUCKTWENTYCHARACTERS t1_jdapd70 wrote

Replying to Setthegodofchaos (#2,311,053)

Yeah it didn't hit me on the iris or pupil area I guess, was very lucky. I'll ask my parents about it in the morning as I was very young when this happened and the memory of the day is quite fuzzy. But I remember running around while my parents were outside chatting and smoking, someone had their arm hanging out over the arm rest in the patio chair, and I just ran face first into the lit cigarette.

E: just talked to dad. Idk how I even remember this, but apparently I was only about 2 or 3 yrs old, and yeah, I just ran face first into his lit cigarette. Superficial damage only, but made himself feel absolutely terrible thinking he'd blinded me lol.

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M4NOOB t1_jdbj54r wrote

This reminds of the time when I had a plane "toy" (more like a model), made from some kinda super hard plastic, which for some reason had a super pointy/spiky (don't know the correct word, not a native speaker) cylinder nose. In addition to that, the wings and the rear were aligned perfectly so it could stand upright, having the nose pointed straight up of course.

For some reason I always stored it like this and apparently I thought it was great to keep right next to my bed on the floor. Needless to say, after waking up in the middle of the night for a toilet break, I suddenly had an actual hole in my foot (not all the way through). Don't remember much more from it as I was quite young.

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I can't find the model, but the nose here is pretty close. Only that the one I had was a less "rounded" cylinder, but just straight lines forming it

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Shymaiden t1_jdbx05n wrote

This brought back a not as interesting memory. Had a small pair of scissors we typically used for fingernails. I grabbed them one night to cut my nail and make it even. Somehow, this night, they slipped out of my hand and fell. You can guess where. Luckily, the sharp end bounced off my foot and didn't impale it, so no ER. Just pain and a blood spot on my sock.

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