Nostalgia for a Pencil Sharpener
It is easy to get nostalgic for stuff. Every day I find myself fixating on things from the past. Usually, it is not surprising stuff. A TV show, movie, or a toy are easy things to recall and to have a fondness for. Today, though, it was something else. I went to use a pencil and realized I did not have a pencil sharpener. Instead of thinking of where I could find some handheld one, my mind went back to the beautiful wall-mounted manual pencil sharpeners of my youth.
We had them in classrooms, of course, but my family also had one in the basement. It was randomly mounted on this support pillar near nothing. So the only reason you had to go to this area of the basement, was to sharpen a pencil. This was a thing I did often. Which when I was young was an event since I was terrified of the basement. Still, I needed to sharpen my pencils for school. So down the basement I went, nearly every day.
As I got more into Dungeons & Dragons, the sharpener became a much-needed gaming accessory. Not only did I need to keep my own pencil sharp, but often the pencils of 4 gamers as well. Eventually, we started gaming in the basement and when we chose a place to put our gaming table, we made it as close to the pencil sharpener as possible. I had a player who would sharpen their pencil out of nervousness at least once an hour. By the end of the session, the pencils would be half the size as when we began.
That pencil sharpener was the one I used from before I could reach it until I got the pencils I sharpened and brought to college with me. One day I came home, and it was just gone. My mother thought one of my sisters took it, but neither of them would admit to it. Nor have I ever seen it at their houses.
To this day, whenever I get the opportunity to sharpen my pencils on a hand-cranked pencil sharpener, I get to it with gusto. I just wish I had one right now. More to the point, I wish I still had that one from my childhood.
