September 2, 2004
I bought a new pencil sharpener the other day. It isn't a high fa-looting electric sharpener. It's just your average, run of the mill, hand grinder. Those sharpeners are my favorite and the only sharpeners that work. (Okay, I do have to admit that the one in my eldest daughter's room at school can flat out chew a pencil into a point, but it is big, bulky, and most likely expensive) For several years I had to use a battery operated one that sat on our computer desk. My husband had no problems using it. He would stick in the pencil, whirl, whirl, and out would come a pencil with a pointy tip. I would put the pencil in, whirl, grind, slurp, and out would come a mauled pencil missing its lead. I hated it.
He then bought me the old fashion hand grinder and attached it in the garage right outside our kitchen door. I was happy. I would go out the kitchen door to the garage and whirl, whirl, sharpen my pencil. One day he moved the sharpener to a place under his work bench. To get to the sharpener, I had to sling around my van in the one car garage, put the pencil under the work bench, search for the opening to the sharpener, and then work my hand under the bench to crank it. It was a hassle, but it worked. Until the day it didn't, and I was forced to chuck the whole appliance and use one of the small hand held sharpeners that come stuck inside an inanimate object. Mine is inside a wooden duck.
Finally the day came when I decided to bite the wood and purchase another good old fashion sharpener that I could sit on my desk. I found one at Walmart for $9.99. Joyous Joy! It has a purple base with many holes of different sizes for all sorts of pencils, although my pencils all seem to be the same size. The sharpener is very colorful with greens, yellows, an pinks and it is very cheerful. It is the kind that suctions to a surface by using a handle to hold it into place. I came home, found the perfect spot, turned the release bar and sucked that baby to the end of my desk. Then I proceeded to sharpen all of my pencils. Whirl, whirl, whirl...success! All of my pencil came out smoothly with nice, sharp, pointy tips. I was in heaven.
So apparently are my children. It took them two seconds to discover the new toy. Within one minute of the discovery, pencils appeared from mysterious hideaways and were sharpened. Within five minutes, my pencil sharpener had been removed and sucked on to another surface.
"Do not remove this sharpener!" I screamed, frantically releasing the bar and sucking it back to my desk. "This is the place for the sharpener. You can stand her and sharpen all you want, but this bar is to be left alone."
My screaming has never produced the results that I want. I can shout until the sky opens up and rains cats and dogs, and my children will clap their hands to their ears, their faces frozen in horror as I scare them with my screaming, but they NEVER so what I scream at them. My pencil sharpener is never at the end of my desk. I have found it on the coffee table. I have found it on my daughter's computer desk. It has turned up on the drawing table, but rarely is it where it should be.
"Why is the sharpener over here?" I yell.
"We were just sharpening pencils," my youngest informs me as if I'm a halfwit.
"Sharpening pencils?" I look around at the millions of sharpened pencils we seem to have accumulated. "We have more than enough sharp pencils."
Jeez, you would think this thing was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But then I'm transported back to my time in elementary school when the sharpener hung near the door of the classroom. How many times did we make that trek to sharpen our pencils? We did it so we could get out of work. We sharpened so that we could talk to people hidden outside in the hallway. We sharpened pencils while we frantically tried to remember answers to test questions. Sometimes we just kept cranking to see how long before the teacher told us to sit down. It was just great fun, and a great excuse, to break up our day. I had many nubby little pencils from using the sharpeners in my classroom.
I give in. "Okay, okay. Just please, leave the sharpener here on my desk, and you can sharpen all the pencils you want."
Just wait until they find out that the sharpener opens and has to be emptied. God help me when that happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment