No school today, so my granddaighter Olivia is playing teacher to her younger sister, Shelby. I get to be the official pencil sharpener, using my pocketknife like my grandpa used to do. Since my mind tends to wander, I must confess my mind wanders today to Murray Hill school and sharpening my pencil in Mrs. Lockyears 1st grade class. In 1st grade, we had graduated from using those big, black pencils that the kindergarten kids used. Now we were accomplished, grownup, and dexterous enough to use that finely crafted implement of civilization, the #2 pencil (what are those other numbers for, anyway?. I guess we werent all that accomplished yet, because these thinner, more elegant instruments were more easlly broken and were in need of frequent sharpening. Not to worry. Right there in our classroom was another wonder of modern technology, the pencil sharpener. All you had to do was raise your hand and you were granted permission to travel to the front of the class and demonstrate, under the admiring stares of you classmates, that you were a sophisticated member of the modern world, and could readily, without a thought, use and understand machinery. I suspect that some of my friends may have broken their pencils deliberately, just to take their momentary place in the sun. I saw many pencils ground down to a very shortened stub, sand teacher sometimes had to admonish that the pencil was sharp enough. I guess needle sharp is not a requirement for writing a scrawled alphabet, but we thought it was. Every so often, it was your turn to empty the sharpener of its shavings, and what a sensory delight was the smell of freshly hewn lumber and that mysterious substance lead. Even more fascinating was the inner mechanism itself. Those knurled, rotating blades that so quicxkly and quietly performed their task. My first remembered introduction to the wonder of the modern world, and a source of appreciation and pleasure, even at my advanced age. I have, of course, owned many of those small hand-held sharpeners that are more portable and can be carried in a pocket or book bag, but the elegance is missing. They shave, istead of grinding, the wood away. They dont smell of the timber yard. I know Im not the first to use a pencil sharpener, and wont be the last. Maybe Im the only one who will ever write a paeon to this humble bit of wonder. But a wonder it was, and a wonder it still is. Im gonna find one, a metal one, and buy it. My granddaughters should have fun, too.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:10:05 +0000
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