In eighth grade, I often played basketball during lunch. On one occasion, the boy with the ball was backing up into me, trying to push me away. In his back pocket, he had a couple of sharpened pencils, pointing up. With one forceful move, one of the pencils penetrated my jeans and into my upper left thigh. I remember it hurting a bit at the time, but not much more than an annoyance. It wasn't until later that I noticed a dark spot sitting under my skin. I figured that it was just residue from the pencil lead.
However, that spot stayed there ... for decades, to the point that I thought it was a mole. I was in my early forties when a type of pimple formed in the area. As I can't resist a good pimple popping, I squeezed the edges, and out came the broken lead of a pencil that had been sharpened nearly thirty years earlier. It was quite a shock to me. Even today, I'm surprised to find that dark spot on my leg, which had been with me for about half of my life, gone.
My younger sons suffering splinters earlier this week had me thinking about my experience. I carried that splinter for such a long time, I thought that it was just a part of me. I wonder what else I might be carrying without realizing it (... there seems to be low-hanging metaphor here, but I think I will just pass it by).