As a child, I had been known to lose items. I lost everything, from lunchboxes to
jackets and toys and jewelry, but I lost pencils almost immediately after receiving them. I
lost all sorts of pencils, from wooden pencils to mechanical ones. I thought they were
expendable, and I didn’t care whether I lost them or not. I think that I lost some of these
pencils on purpose sometimes because they were uncomfortable to write with or they
were ugly or too short.
There was no special way I received my special pencil, I simply bought it at my
local Target at the beginning of my freshman year of high school. I bought other pencils
as well, and as most special things start out, I didn’t really see this pencil as special yet.
Eventually, I ended up losing all my other pencils in the first month of the school year,
but by some miracle, this one pencil, this rose-gold colored, metal mechanical pencil,
stayed loyal to me for far longer than anything else I held in the past. Or perhaps, I was
the one who stayed loyal to it. Not because it’s an object and it doesn’t have a brain, but
because I had managed to use it thoroughly and took the time to carefully put it away in
my pencil case. I ended up keeping this pencil for five years, and over that time, I
sometimes think that my precious pencil had actually started to think for itself, for me.
Whenever I think that I lost it, it almost magically appears in my pencil case again and I
rejoice whenever I find it again.
I looked for an insignificant object, I saw another writing utensil on my desk. An
old yellow felt-tip pen. I don’t know where I got it, it’s definitely not from a simple pen set
because it’s the only one of it’s kind, so I’m assuming that I picked it up from the floor at
school and shoved it into my pencil case because I felt like it.
. . .
An Ode to my Mechanical Pencil.
Ah, my beloved mechanical pencil.
There’s nothing really special about you.
Your color isn’t exactly the brightest,
You aren’t necessarily the most expensive or valuable utensil,
There’s nothing special about your lead or eraser,
The only special thing about you is how you managed to stay with me for the past four years of
my student life.
Countless peers would pass you by for a few days before they mysteriously went missing. Most
pencils would’ve gotten afraid and ran away, but you didn’t.
You stayed with me unconditionally.
You accompanied me while I wrote some of the worst timed essays of my life. You were there
when I wrote a love letter to that cute boy from world history. You were there when I failed
countless math tests and aced all of my grammar quizzes. You were there when I cheated on my
biology test and still managed to get a 69. You were there when I signed up for my clubs and
when I wrote profanities on the bathroom stalls.
Thank you for seeing all of my scholarly successes and failures and choosing to stick with me.