Gotta Pencil?

Though it is undocumented, If someone tells me to make a note of a certain fact, I may be the last person on earth who pulls out a day book and a writing implement (pen or pencil) instead of a phone. At almost 89, I don’t mind not being up to date. I’m surprised there is still a website for pencils, though the designations are china marking, laundry markers and colored carpenter pencils. Children can still get special pencils at a party, but they are usually left behind after they roll off on the floor. The cover it all Amazon does have boxes of yellow #2 Ticonderoga which were my memory jogger.

In a day journal from 2000 was a reminiscence wondering even then how many families still had a pencil sharpener. My daddy could pull open the right hand drawer of the desk, choose a pencil, and if the point wasn’t to his satisfaction, walk to the back porch where the sharpener, turn it yourself, was attached to the wall. Caught in public with a broken point, he could open his pen knife and sharpen on the spot. Sometimes the pencils lasted long enough for the eraser to harden and smear instead of removing the marks.

Pencils arrived on the American scene thanks to the family of Henry David Thoreau who in 1834 developed a mixture of plumbago and sawdust to compete with the mark making addition already developed in England. The initial sales in New York paid his Harvard tuition and supported a school he ran which taught Louisia May Alcott. Eventually the mixture was used for electrotyping and its sale underwrote the publishing of Walden which was not a success. He died of tuberculosis from breathing the dust of what was the pre-graphite mixture.

To wrap up, Paper Mate finally made a use-and -toss mechanical pencil. Children around school knew that brand belonged to me and would religiously return them from a left behind location. I still have half a box available and husband David would keep as many as four in his pocket to note unidentified phone numbers and to hand out to persons caught without something to write with. You’ve probably surmised this offering is not Biblically based; however, yesterday a technical relative had to spend an hour so I could send a text message to an Android phone instead of always having to call. My mind and mouth may know the words, and a pencil at hand to write them down assures their life.  Read what you wrote with a pencil because your phone needed charging.

My tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.

Psalm 45:1