I'm sure we have all experienced this in some fashion.
Working on mechanical objects exposes us to some irritating things....of which we find out in curious manners.
While the attention getting sensations you describe do make a lasting impression, I find it is the stealthy things that seem to get me the most.
Things like trac-lok additive............a seemingly benign little bottle of special lubricant.
However, should you get this on....well....anything, that thing will stink like the horrible additive for the next ten years and there is basically no way to clean it off.
My father had a tube in a chalkgun with som realy sticky blackgrease probably boiled by the devil himself. That chalkgun never left the rack
but that devilsgrease was on everything in the shop. You was doing something and suddely you felt something sticky on your hand, and the amount of a matchstik head seamed to be enought to make spots on 64 car interiors, 44 pair of T shirts, 16 wieners 8 pair of jeans and a couple of leather jackets. Damned Impossible to wash of anything okay tool you could put in petroleum based deegreaser,,,,,,the wiener not so much. The trick to get rid of tar is butter.......well buttering up ones wiener seems.........a little kinky
obviously there was some devils grease on some of my clothes that wife washed together with her WHITE competition jodhpur pants. I can say i dont got awards for best family member of the month.