Pencils

 From the time I could hold a pencil - as the saying goes - I loved to draw.  Pencils were prized an collected.  Pencils were such a draw for me (so to speak) I appreciated even the image of pencils.  My sister and I had curtains in our room that I loved to stare at.  The curtain design was of baby elephants holding pencils in their trunks, and an apple in one foot.

In grade school, we were given fat round, dark red pencils.   We were also given large sheets of brown ruled paper with wide lines on it.  Not sure why smaller hands were given larger paper and pencils?

Not all pencils were created equal, however.  I preferred the softer lead (graphite) pencils, which made for blacker, smoother lines.   After 3rd grade, we graduated to the standard, #2 pencils, and standard ruled paper, and knew that we were now “big kids”.  

Cut to an event traumatic enough that I remember it 60 years later.  It was the last day of second grade, and my teacher had given each of us a large chocolate pencil, with tinfoil wrapper that looked like a pencil. 

My two favorite things in one – chocolate and a pencil! I was enchanted. I was on my way home, holding my pencil up proudly, when a boy slightly older than myself pretended that he was an airplane as he ran towards me, wings outstretched, and broke my chocolate pencil in half.  He  laughed, and I cried.  I went back to the teacher, and told her what had happened – could I have another one?  But there were none left, and I went home crying into my broken chocolate pencil.