Personification

Most things grow as time passes around them. People, animals, trees, flowers... Humans usually class these things as alive. According to the narrow minded scientists they all so much depend on, something can only be alive if it grows. But they’re wrong, of course. And as it turns out, their scientists aren’t all that smart...

My shape and size changes all the time, yet I’m classed as an ‘object’. I am ‘not-living’, yet I can remember more than most. I probably know more than the average human being. Doesn’t that make me alive?

I can remember being new. I can remember being carried somewhere in a cardboard box with countless others of my kind, each of us wondering what the big bad world had in store. I was long, thin, the colour of bright yellow that could be compared to the sun

HB was the first one of us I ever met that knew anything about anything. He could recite numbers nearly up to a thousand, something we young ones found miraculous. He was good at math – it was part of his job, he said, and he would do it whenever he wasn’t stuck behind the left ear of his ‘owner’.

I met him when I was put on display in a stationary shop after a tedious car journey that lasted no shorter than four hours from the factory -  the ‘official’ name the humans had given my place of birth. The man who ran the shop put him down for a few minutes while he blabbered on the phone to someone about something unimportant. Like I said before, humans aren’t all that bright.

He was short: barely half the height of my impressive twenty centimetres, and his blue coating was chipped all over. HB told me that our kind were used for something great and that we should never feel useless or think that the pens sneering at us on the other side of the counter. They were too pompous and naive for their own good, he said. In a couple of months, half of them would be completely useless, and when they reached that stage, we’d be the ones laughing.

We were able to chat and he was more than happy to answer all our questions, when suddenly, we all watched in horror as HB’s ‘owner’ picked him up roughly and shoved the blunt tip of him into a strange looking machine. Before we could do anything, HB was shoved into the machine and turned. We all winced as he got what he’d tell us was a ‘trim’, something that wasn’t actually as painful as it seemed.

I didn’t hear anymore stories from him after that. A little girl ran over and after careful consideration, picked me up in her little fist so tight I could hardly breathe. She quickly walked back over to her mother and I was carelessly chucked into a cage of sorts with other bits and pieces. And so began my days with Anna.

Anna had just turned five – she was very excited for her first year school year that would be starting up soon, 

and what better way to prepare for it than go and get tools to use? Her mother – the town’s gossip, by the sounds of things – was someone who rarely shut up, and adding the high voice of a child wanting attention to that...let’s just say the car ride back to their home was a nightmare.

I felt ruined when Anna felt the need to write her name on me. It took a while, almost ten minutes to scrawl the four letters of her first name onto my gleaming yellow skin. It was a tedious experience, looking back, but it was then that I learned to spell my first word: Anna. A – N – N – A. How accomplished I felt when I was thrown into a case of some sort along with other writing utensils and was able to recite this to them.

After a week or so, I was brought out again, but this time in a completely different environment. There were at least two dozen children all around Anna’s age sitting at desks similar to the one I was on now. Anna looked down at me with a frown, then pulling out the same device that had been used on HB on the stationary shop, she shoved me into it. I winced, but relaxed when I realised HB had been right. It wasn’t actually painful. If anything, it was quite soothing, and by the end of it, I felt as though I could breathe more, not to mention the sharp, dangerous tip I got out of it. I was quickly turned upside down, and began to learn my alphabet.

A few months were spent like this. Through Anna’s help, I was able to learn to count to twenty, spell different words (some had up to five letters in them!), and draw various things, like trees and flowers. I was having the time of my life! HB was right when he said that our kind where worthwhile, no matter how old-fashioned the pens and calculator said I was. A couple of pens were thrown into a box of sorts and left there (I later found out that they were going to a junkyard because they had run out of something called ink, making them useless).

Anna took me and the rest of her pencil case home for the Christmas break. I was excited to be involved with her writing a few simple sentences on what she did over the holidays, but I never had the chance. Her older brother came into the kitchen one day, looking for something to write with, and I was chosen. 

I found that I preferred having Anna as an owner over Tyson. The teenager forgot to return me to her, so I became his. He was careless with me: he’d drop me, wear my tip down to a nub then roughly sharpen me, chew on the end of me when he was thinking... It was like torture (something I discovered the meaning of when I had to write a brief description of The Princess Bride).

But I had to admit that, despite the ill-treatment, I found high school much more fascinating than year one. I had to catch up to learn all about cells, chemicals, advanced Math and be able write long three thousand word essay on the most horrendous topics, but I loved it.

If only the pencils back at the stationary shop could see me now. I was even smarter than HB!

A year passed, and I was still surviving. I had lost eight or so centimetres, but Tyson was still using me along with three other pencils he owned. We would share the knowledge we had learned that day so no one fell dumber than the others because of the lack of use. Every single thing that I was ever told by those three and everything I ever helped Michael through in high school is still in my mind.

One day out of the blue, Tyson grabbed me roughly and began writing his information on a form of sorts. Two tough essays and three long hours later, I was so exhausted that it took me the rest of the day to recover. I later figured out that it was his college admission essay I had just completed. I had never felt so proud in my life.

By the time I was reduced to only nine centimetres or so, I was brought to College. Somehow, I’d managed to sneak my way into all the new equipment Tyson’s mother had bought him to take. College was every pencils dream – there was so much work to do, so much to learn. I can remember every single word that came out of the professors’ mouths, retaining all I learned from the term papers and tests I had to take.

By the time we were nearing the middle of our second, I began wishing I could speak to humans. Tyson was starting to flunk, and how I wished to tell him the answers because I knew them. But somehow, we managed to scrape together just enough credits to pass.

The end of the academic year rolled around, which meant it was time for Tyson to clean the dorm we had lived in and go home for the holidays. During the packing process, he forgot about me. Well, he actually forgot that he dropped me the night before when he was using me to write a note to his girlfriend telling her that she should come visit his family over the break, but he didn’t pick me up.

The door closing behind him was the sound of my doom. I felt as though I could burst in to tears (forgetting temporarily  that pencils do not in fact cry). I had served him so well, doing all his work for him, helping him out. I had learned so much, owed so much to him and especially Anna, the little girl who had allowed me to have such a great, yet short life.

I became bitter as I waited for someone to find me. It’s strange, I thought, that we things that are taken for granted know so much. Apparently we’re only writing utensils, better for nothing but back-up in case a pen were to run out, and we are things that are so easily misplaced or promptly forgotten.

And that’s how I spent my summer vacation. Stuck behind a door in a college dorm. That is until, a cleaner stopped by. She scooped me up, then after a quick vacuum of the room, I left for my next grand adventure.