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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

 

I wasn’t singing in the rain.

Gene Kelly did that. I walked in a light rain. Walking on a cloudy day was a way I could keep a proper social distance from my shadow.

Was I wearing a raincoat or carrying an umbrella? No and no. I carried a wooden pencil. Not a mechanical pencil. A wooden pencil. That great American institution. The pencil is more powerful than the umbrella. Walking in the rain is in my wheelhouse. I wrote things down as they occurred to me. My small notebook wasn’t rainproof, so I limited its time exposed to the precipitation. I wrote with a pencil as ink might run. When it came to getting wet, I was crushing it.

“Knock, knock,” I wrote. “Who’s there?” “The rain.” “The rain who?” My paper became soggy before I could think of a clever conclusion.
The pencil rode in a pocket. I used to put it behind my ear, but pencils don’t stay there. A carpenter told me the secret was to park your gum behind your ear first.
Pencils are important. We tell dear hearts and gentle people that we will pencil something in. That’s not typically true. We generally write it in ink or type it into some sort of digital device.
I’ve taught writing classes. We used wooden pencils at my request. The problem was there could be 40 students with pencils in a classroom without a pencil sharpener. I brought a tiny pocket one, but it was overwhelmed.

As is the case with most people, pencils and I go way back. My grammar school, The School of Wizardry, was where school lunches were craved. The lunchroom could have been an award-winning cafe.

Mrs. Demmer taught first and second grade. She took attendance each day. She did a roll call so she could vouch for our whereabouts in case the FBI inquired. As she rattled off our names, we responded, “Present.”

What a bunch of knuckleheads we were. One of us ate paste. We used pencils. We hadn’t moved to the point where taking a pen apart and putting it back together was a big part of our school day. When I was in first grade, the school provided things to keep us occupied in good activities. One of those was a pencil sharpener. I think it had been made in Pennsylvania. I’d raise my hand and ask, “Mrs. Demmer, may I sharpen my pencil?” I’d tried, “Mrs. Demmer, can I sharpen my pencil?” with less than desirous results.
Mrs. Demmer, being a fine teacher, would reply, “Yes, you may, Allen.” And then she’d remind me not to use the pencil to clean my ears.
The classroom had one pencil sharpener. That was barely enough to go around. It was bolted to a wall in the perfect spot. Location, location, location. Some students had chintzy plastic pencil boxes that included tiny sharpeners. Those things excelled at breaking pencil lead.

I’d stick one end of the pencil in (hoping I’d picked the correct end), start cranking, and out came a finely sharpened writing instrument. A lean, mean scribbling machine. The sharpener had an adjustable dial, making it possible to sharpen pencils of different sizes. It was magic, but maybe not in its highest form. The aroma of freshly sharpened pencils was divine.

My father used a knife to sharpen his pencils. He kept an odd-shaped carpenter’s pencil in his overalls pocket because he was always marking wood in need of sawing. Having a pencil sharpener in school kept everyone from having to bring a knife to school. That was a good idea, but most boys brought one anyway.
I stood at that emotional support sharpener and sharpened my pencil from one end to the other while daydreaming that I was some sort of a cape-wearing, superhero adult who wasn’t sharpening a pencil in grammar school. Sharpening pencils gave me something to do while contemplating the world and licking my wounds.

“Are you eating them?” my mother asked when I told her I needed more pencils. I assured her we did a lot of writing in first grade. Nearly everyone in the class had a writer’s bump on a finger.
Now I own an electric sharpener. It isn’t the same. Not enough exercise at a time when we don’t even need to crank open car windows. But it’s still good.
I’m staying at home for an indefinite period. I can’t dance. Never could sing. It’s too wet to plow. I might as well sharpen a pencil.

Al Batt’s column appears every Wednesday.