Pencil Logic

With the first day of school right around the corner, here's Chuck Buell, with yet another “sharp point” to make! 

 

(Wasn't life so much easier when school started the day after Labor Day ...

You just knew that Labor Day was going to be the first Monday in September - and that school was going to start the day after that! And it was usually a half day to boot!)

Sending the kids off to school in the dreadful heat of August just doesn't make sense to me ... plus they end up losing a whole month of summer!

The world just seemed to make so much more sense back then.)

 

ANYWAY ...

 

It’s Back-to-School Time once again and time to buy those brand new wonderful and unique smelling School Supplies!

 

Like the famous “Number Two” Pencil!  ( Yes, they are still used in many classrooms today! )

 

When you read the word “pencil,” what might have come to mind was a long, slender, yellow, wooden, stylus topped with a pink eraser ( or what I refer to as a “Portable, Handheld, User-Friendly, No Batteries Required, Word-Processing Device! )

 

That Yellow Pencil color has been around since 1899 when a Czech manufacturing company decided to color its pencils yellow because of the color’s long association with royalty in China ( the country’s next-door neighbor. )

Soon, other companies followed suit, and the yellow pencil became ubiquitous around the world. 

 

And to this day, most grade school students can easily spell “pencil,” while most high school grads can’t spell “ubiquitous!”

 

Can you?

 

Yeah, me neither.

 

Now then, why “Number Two?”

 

It was writer Henry David Thoreau who worked in his father’s pencil factory and somewhere along the line, Thoreau introduced the system for measuring the hardness of pencil graphite marking them with numbers from 1 to 4. Number 2 turned out to be the most satisfying.

 

Now, can you spell “Thoreau” on your first attempt?!

 

Nah, me neither.

 

And it was also Thoreau who popularized the common phrase heard so often in classrooms and offices everywhere and in the Forgotten Hits World Headquarters when one who does not have a pencil immediately in hand says to another, “Pardon me, would you please thro-reau me a pencil?”

 

OK, I might have made that last part up but still . . . .

 

Nevertheless, from writing Books to Love Letters and all else in between with a pencil, here is my “Chuck Buell Books and Letters Written with a Pencil Minute Medley!”

 

 

CB ( which stands for “Composition Boy!” )

 

My favorite Back To School commercial ever ... 

 

Ever been stabbed with a #2 pencil???

 

I have ...

 

Third grade.

 

Can't remember the name of the girl who did it ...

 

But the mark is STILL there some 62 years later!!!

 

 

When it first happened, my parents took me to the doctor as it looked like a piece of lead must have penetrated my skin and was now embedded in there ...

But after a bit of painful digging, he determined there was nothing there to remove ... and that the discoloration would probably go away "in a couple of days."

 

Yet here it is, 62 years later, and it's still there.

So yes ... the #2 Pencil gets my vote as "most durable" for sure!!!

A couple of other pencil songs that came to mind when I first read Chuck's piece ...

 

[I just LOVE the Barry Manilow version of this song!]

And of course the minute he said #2, my mind went in a completely different direction! (lol)