Pencils

I rather like pencils. No, that's not right. I love pencils. You might think that it would be weird to ask for pencils for Christmas (which I did a few times), or save up my money to go down to the store and get a new pack, but they are the most necessary tool in my life. To me, a new pencil is like a shining blessing emerging out of the oblivion of scribbles, graphite smudges, and torn notebook paper. With each one, I treasure it like a diamond.

The pencils that I use have to be of a specific type, too. I absolutely refuse to use one of those pencils with the thin plastic layer of decorations on top, with the green and white erasers, even though there are oodles of them in my house. First of all, that isn't an eraser, that's a smudge creator. You would think that somebody who made pencils would want to maybe add an eraser on the top, but all there is is a thick, dry piece of rubber that either tears the paper or covers up the letters with so many smudge marks it's hard to read what it says in the first place. Second, nobody wants a pencil with an outside that peels off. It's horrible.

To me, the perfect pencil is either yellow or orange, and is nice and long, with an extremely sharp point at one end, and a soft eraser on the end. This eraser doesn't just make the writing hard to make out. It completely vanishes anything that it is put up to vanish, and doesn't wear away while doing so. The ones with the firm erasers are all right, too, but I prefer the softer kind. No matter which it is, though, I try to make it last for as long as possible. That's why I got mad at my classmates in Spanish when they tried to karate chop my pencils.

There's something about pencils that really just calls out to me. I don't know if it's the way that they just fit perfectly in your hand, ready for work, or the smooth texture. Maybe it's how they can write out an entire world just with simple strokes on a piece of paper, and create such powerful meaning. With the hand moving the right way, they can create the most elaborate pieces of art, whether in pictures or writing. Whatever it is, though, typing will never be the same.