I had to go out of town for work a few weeks back--an extremely rare occurrence for me, which made it all the more stressful (read: I am a total wimp when it comes to leaving familiar ground). We went to Eastern Washington, which (generally unlike Western Washington) is quite hot during the summer. Knowing that there was a good possibility my belongings would be exposed to being left in a hot car, pencil made better sense than fountain pen to bring along for writing. I also knew I'd likely be wayyy too busy and on-the-go to mess around with sharpening, so mechanical pencil it was. Finally, I knew I'd be going to multiple sites, under major time constraints, so the chances of my leaving a pencil behind were pretty much guaranteed.
With all this factored in, I took along a purple Pentel Twist-Erase: rugged, dependable, well-equipped in the eraser department, and not too pricey or difficult to replace should the all-but-inevitable occur and it get permanently borrowed or left behind. I stuffed it full of leads, and off we went.
It had a pretty tough week: heavy and rough usage, and not just by me. Since I seemed to always be the one who always had a writing instrument at the ready, it got passed around a lot. People broke leads, it was dropped, tossed in linty purse pockets, and left (as predicted) in a car hot enough to do this to the gummy vitamins I foolishly toted along:
A few times I thought I'd lost it, or that someone had wandered off with it. But somehow, it came through it all without a hitch. We're still together. It got me through what was, to me, a very tense week, one little thing I could always depend on.
And now...now I was just realizing I'm kind of nervous about taking it away from my desk, for fear I'll lose it. Because now it's special. We've adventured together, this little Twist-Erase and I. It's like the hero's horse in a quest: seems like now it deserves to be put out to pasture to live a life of luxury, lest something dreadful happen to such a well-loved and loyal servant.
OK, so that's all rather hokey. And I suspect I'll get over it sooner or later. Otherwise I could go broke buying inexpensive-ish mechanical pencils I'm afraid to take anywhere...
