“The initial piercing wasn’t bad at all,” Colton Pifer said of the first step on his journey to worldwide notoriety. “It was your standard piercing with forceps and a hollow needle.”
Pifer, a resident of Monroe, Mich., just set the world record for the largest nasal septum piercing.
Pifer has managed to stretch the initial piercing hole, which he got when he was 18, to 2.6 centimeters. He told Guinness, keepers of world records, that he began stretching the hole about five years after getting the initial piercing.
“As I kept stretching, I kept thinking to myself ‘I wonder how big I can go with this’ and that thought eventually turned into ‘I wonder if I can be the biggest,’” he said.
After receiving encouragement to see how far he could stretch it once he started, he realized at one point that he wasn’t far from the world record, so he grabbed for that elusive brass ring.
“I got to a certain size and was going to stop but so many people kept asking about it and saying things,” he said. “I got curious and decided to look into the world record.”
At this point, Pifer has to have custom jewelry made because shops don’t carry anything as large as what his piercing requires, but he says it doesn’t interfere with too many things.
“I have to use a straw when drinking from a can, and a knife and fork when eating a sandwich,” Pifer said.
And, he says, it’s a conversation starter.
“Children’s reactions are priceless too,” he said. “They always stare, and they have no filter to what they say. It’s great.”
So what are the advantages to having a flesh tunnel through the center of his nose? Cool party tricks, he says.
“My favorite is to take out my jewelry and put a hotdog through it,” he said. “I also like to stick my thumb in it. That always gets people riled up.”