Kevin Sells You a Pencil

“Hello, it’s very nice to meet you.

Finding you here, in my office, sitting in that chair, I can only imagine that you are interested in purchasing this pencil.

I should warn you from the start, this pencil probably isn’t for you. Feel that weight there in your pocket? That squarey, glassy thing? If you’re looking for a pencil to write with, jeez, that little thing in your pocket there will do a darn good job. Better, even.

Heck, if you don’t take care of this pencil properly, it might break, and then you’d need to find a pencil sharpener. And once it gets too short, your hand might cramp when you use it. You might get tired and your handwriting could become sloppy or perhaps not even legible. And you know what they say about people who have illegible handwriting—unhireable, that’s what they say.

But it does have a simplicity to it. Nothing more than necessary. Wood, graphite, synthetic rubber to erase with. The shape is nice, too, now that I come to think of it. Hm. Nice and hexagonal, from start to finish. And the smell! Smells of classroom warfare; dangling feet, paper football, the droning on and on of Mr. Salzman a brilliant contrast with that fickle mistress, the school bell, signaling the freedom of recess and imprisonment of its finish.

Hm. I remember when I was a kid there was this fat kid, Ben. Must have been 4th, 5th grade. There I was, a skinny, lanky little kid, running around chasing girls, playing basketball on the asphalt courts with different colored basketball backboards. Throwing, catching, running, playing—you know, things kids do. Anyway, there was this fat kid, Ben. And I was never a big bully or anything, no, nothing like that, but Ben, who was a little bigger than me, was in my class. And there weren’t that many fat kids in class, and Ben was definitely the biggest. And he was a little wimpy, I guess like we all were given the proper push. And I remember it was the time when we started learning words, and what words meant. I remember I spent a whole summer when I was 10 thinking ‘anus’ was another word for ‘vagina,’ but that’s another story. Anyway, someone told me about the slang ‘phat,’ meaning ‘cool’ or whatever. And then, I don’t know why, but I started calling Ben ‘phat’. I pretended that I was calling him ‘phat’ but what I was really doing was finding an excuse to make fun of him for being fat. And so I called chubby old Ben fat over and over until he charged at me—I still remember the look on his face, so many years later, angry like a bull he was—and knocked me down. The teacher saw and he rushed over and picked me up, and Ben was crying. He told the teacher in front of the whole class that I called him fat. My parents were called and I cried in front of them and lied to get out of it.

Anyway, I’ve never forgotten that kid, Ben. I wonder what he’s up to these days.

Here—you can have the pencil. No charge.