People still have 'lead' pencil mark on their hand from being stabbed in school

If you ever got up to any sort of tomfoolery at school then you might have somehow ended up stabbing your hand with a pencil to leave a mark.

It's just the sort of stuff people got up to in their younger days, jab a dotted mark into your hand here, write 'love' and 'hate' on your knuckles in pen there, it's all fine and washes off at the end of the day.

Only for some people it doesn't wash off and that pencil mark from where they jabbed their hand still bears the spot.

It's OK, you're definitely not alone if that's something you have as it turns out loads of people still bear the lead markings years later.

Well, we say lead. What's actually in your pencil is something called graphite which is safe and non toxic so that mark isn't the sign of something that will slowly poison you.

Loads of people have just been going round with trace amounts of their school pencil in their body all this time.

TikToker Paige Siegel recently showed off her pencil mark plenty of years after it was first etched into her skin, and plenty of others realised they weren't the only one.

Her comments section was soon filled with people discovering they were part of a peculiar fellowship.

"I just checked my right knee... yep, still there," one wrote, while another added that they'd just remembered they had a mark like this which was still on them.

Someone else was very pleased to discover they weren't the only one, while a fourth declared 'I found my people'.

Here's the science-y bit, according to dermatologist Dr Fayne Frey the little dots you can leave over yourself by prodding with a pencil are called 'traumatic tattoos'.

She told TODAY style that many of the pencil marks would turn out to be 'permanent stains' which would stay with your skin just like the ink in tattoos.

Our visible skin is the epidermis which is above a layer known as the dermis, and if a little bit of graphite is able to burrow deep enough then it's going to be like a real tattoo and the mark will remain.

It's basically harmless, your only health concern is an infection thanks to the initial pencil stabbing so if you've had a mark for ages without a problem then you're likely going to be fine.

Pencil tattoos also fade given enough time, though like ink tattoos this is something which can take decades.

Featured Image Credit: Tik Tok/@paigesiegel/X/@tuna_helicopter

Topics: Science, Social Media, TikTok

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker