Pencils

I used to have this bitchin’ mechanical pencil. A fancy, expensive one; the kind you refill the lead and eraser instead of just pitching it when you run out of lead and the eraser goes all flat so that you rip the paper instead of erasing. It also had the little clicker to advance the lead (by the way I do know it’s graphite) on the side instead of the eraser end. I know that some people are firmly in the eraser end clicker camp, and that’s O.K. I don’t mind, but I prefer the side clicker lead advancer. And after being introduced to mechanical pencils I have never gone back to regular ones. They get all dull and blurry and then you have to sharpen them. Besides the lazy factor I always felt like a total dork when I had to get up in class to use the pencil sharpener.
Anyway, I had this pencil, and it rocked. Now that I’m drawing all the time (and I use mechanical pencils for drawing too) I was wondering where that pencil was. A complete lack of searching for it has failed to turn it up from the endless cache of clutter I call my bedroom/office/TV lounge/library/place where I keep my crap. Much to my dismay I have been unable to locate a replacement at any of the stores I have shopped at recently. The only pencils I saw with the side clicker had those dorky rubber grips. I don’t like them and I don’t get them. They don’t make holding a pencil any more comfortable for me. They make it awkward and hard to hold. The last thing I need is a poor grip on my writing utensil. I’m in charge of this operation and the thing had better go where I point it. You have to watch those bastards every minute.

Example: once upon a time, before the dark times, before the Divorce. Winter lived in a nice home with her parents and her two sisters and their dog plus whatever other pets her mother decided she needed to have at that moment (only the dog was constant). Winter’s dad is the rather handy sort and spent much of his time, when he wasn’t working 40+ hours a week, doing laundry, cooking, taking care of the kids, etc. fixing up the house they lived in. And the man did a damn good job. The particular project that figures in our story is the one where the tacky old golden mustard coloured carpet had been pulled up to make way for new carpet. In the interm the wood floor got an airing for a spot of time. During this time there was a day that involved cleaning of the house. Imagine a young Winter carrying and armload of odds and ends to be put away. The fates decided to have a good old laugh at her expense that day. An evil, regular old #2 pencil, sharpened to atomic precision, fell out of the armload of crap, hit the temporarily exposed floorboards on it’s eraser, and bounced up stabbing her in the leg! To this day she still has a small purple mark right above her ankle where the pencil stabbed her.

Damn pencils.