A Keble Undergraduate ended up in the John Radcliffe Hospital earlier this week after his inability to remove an earring left him with pliers attached to the side of his head.
The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained to Cherwell that “a last minute and quite shoddy attempt to look respectable for a job interview the following morning backfired massively when I realised I couldn’t get my piercing out.
“After several failed attempts, I sought the assistance of [my friend] James who had some ‘big old pliers’ in the hope I could cut the bugger off.”
The friend in question, fellow undergraduate James Davies, elaborated, “The earring was a bead ring piercing, and supposedly could be removed simply by pulling the bead off. He tried all day and evening to remove it to no avail.”
Davies continued, “I tried for ten minutes to cut the ring to free his ear with no luck. Eventually, I got a safe angle and squeezed the handles very tightly until eventually they cut the earring and the bead fell off.
“I thought I had fixed it and told him it was sorted, but realised something didn’t feel quite right. I went to release the pliers but the handles just moved flimsily and it seemed the inner mechanism had completely snapped inside, jamming the pliers shut with the earring wire still jammed inside.”
He went on to explain his initial panic and then uncontrollable laughter on realising that his friend “literally had a huge multi-tool thing attached to his ear”.
A second friend of the “plier-ed” student then proceeded to call the Keble porters to seek their advice, as the realisation dawned that he had to leave for London in eight hours and he was stuck on the floor with a pair of pliers completely stuck to his ear.
Davies described to Cherwell how a Junior Dean arrived soon after to find the student sitting on the floor holding the pair of pliers to his head, as Davies sat on his chair with a coat over his mouth trying not to laugh.
“She phoned 999 as it was starting to bleed and we had no way of removing it.”
The injured undergraduate added, “[We] got a taxi to the JR, where police and other quite seriously injured patients seemed to forget their woes for a bit upon seeing a massive pair of pliers attached to my ear.”
The Accident and Emergency department at the John Radcliffe Hospital removed the pliers from the student’s head.
On the consequences of the event, the affected Keblite elucidated, “I did find it quite funny at the time, and a lot funnier now, but also had basically resigned myself to not going to my job interview and thereby messing up a potential career path, which, despite the hilarity of having pliers stuck to your head, is never great.”
The student suffered no lasting damage.
