Kingdom of Knuffel

I thought this was going to be about some environmental alert and cacti only flowering every X many years and...
this was instead a much more immediate warning!

Sounds awful, I'm so glad you warned me.

I've not really been hurt by any cacti. Every once in a while when picking prickly pears I get careless and get a clump of those super-fine needles but they're more irritating than actually painful, and the wax trick works on them pretty well so I would say it doesn't count.

(You know the wax trick? Use wax like you're going to remove hair but instead it removes the cacti needles, even those super-fine ones that are otherwise hard to remove)

I've seen potted cacti
And they were all tiny

And belonged to someone else so I didn't touch

So no

I've had those small potted cacti as a kid but they didn't have flowers. I've touched them though and I didn't get needles in my skin.

I'll take note of any future cacti flowers though xD

Oh this happened when I was a kid! There were potted cacti in my gated apartment community and they had these cute little button flowers, like baby poppies. I did have a hunch this was a bad idea, but I was too tempted and tried to pick one.

So I got a thorn in my palm and my mom took it out with a safety pin. The process just seemed long and excruciating and I can still remember it vividly.

Thus, I officially back up Moi's advice. Sound advice, folks, sound advice.

Yep, but I wasn't even trying to pick the flowers. We were moving the flower pots and it felt like the pot was going to fall and out of instinct I tried to grab it. As you can imagine, that was a biiiig mistake! I had sting wounds for a week in my hands. Tried to stay in a 1 meter radius from them since than... But the flowers really are nice

Well, it's a defense mechanism so you can't really blame the plant XD

Plants are always fun to pick and I had to make a herbarium for class once. It was really fun looking at all the plants and I found a prickly plant which wouldn't flatten but it was awesome so I included it. I can't remember what it was called but it was a type of cacti.

I've gotten some pokes but nothing horrible. I knew not to touch them too much. Many of the needles are designed to get stuck under your skin so you never bother the cactus again.