Eye eye captain
Once back when I was a grotty student, my flatmate Stu decided he wanted his eyebrow pierced. Being too poor to pay someone to do it properly, and too drunk and macho to need anesthetic he asked one of us to do it.

I stepped up as I was drunk enough to be non-squeamish, and found a large non-too-sharp safety pin. None of us had any idea of the proper place on the eyebrow to pierce, so I just pinched a flap of skin in the middle, and stabbed away.

I wasn't expecting the effort required to push the pin through the skin, nor the crunching sound it made when it hit something a bit solid. Stu was not expecting the terrible agonising pain, and couldn't help jerking his head upwards.

Then one of the other guys started shouting at us to hold still, and looking down I saw that the pin had pierced the skin on the top of the brow, but had not made it out the other side. Instead it had travelled down inside the skin and appeared under Stu's eyelid. The end of the pin was pushing the eyelid out like the side of a tent. I quickly pulled the pin out and Stu gingerly pressed his eyeball to see it it had been pierced. The drunken gods had smiled on us and his eye was not damaged at all (his eyebrow was another matter).

We actually discussed having another go at it, as the hole was mostly through, but I chickened out of another attempt, and no-one else wanted to try either. After the ragged hole had healed, Stu saved up and paid someone to do it properly. I still think we would have been fine if the safety pin had been sharper.
(d5ve, Fri 1 Dec 2006, 15:29, Reply)