Timothy loves a few things in life a great deal. One of those things is sharp pencil. We go through a lot of pencils in this house, as well as a lot of erasers and pencil sharpeners. Somehow we are blessed with a seemingly never ending supply of free pencils advertising local businesses, children’s birthdays and household safety tips , snowman and Easter egg erasers that only smear rather than erase, and crappy plastic sharpeners that jam and break the leads. All of these things are a daily annoyance for poor Timothy.
I have bought at least a dozen manual pencil sharpeners in the last two years. All of them either broke or the razor inside wore out within weeks turning the “sharpener” into more of a “mauler”. Obviously, we needed a less wasteful solution.
When I was a kid, we had a big, old, silver pencil sharpener with a dial for different pencil sizes mounted on my father’s work bench in the garage. He would buy us boxes of round red pencils with no erasers and thumb sized pink erasers. That was what we needed; a good, sturdy, industrial strength sharpener and bulk supplies. Nothing electric or plastic to break or be plugged in.
Last week, I took Timothy to his intake meeting at the Services Access Place in town. It had been suggested to us as a way to find and coordinate services. Timothy was very nervous; he thought we were going to another doctor or counselor. However, the meeting went well, Timothy was allowed to read the whole time and we did manage to get a lot of previously unreachable services to give us the time of day. I had promised Timothy that we would stop by the mom & pop office supply place on the way home if he could keep it together during the meeting, and so when we were done we walked over.
Timothy seemed unimpressed with the store overall, but loved the display of pencils and erasers. I let him pick out a few of each (he chose round green pencils and heavy white erasers). I was pleased to find not one metal wall mountable sharpener, but a choice of three. I bought the fancy model with the adjustable dial and mounted it as soon as we got home.
I keep trying to remind myself that life for Timothy is full of unfathomable concessions that he has to make and weird social rules to follow all the time. Not only does he have to make due with items geared towards a right hand dominant world, but he has to do it while puzzling out what to do in all respect to things social. I am all for equal rights of all persuasions of handedness and less stress for us all in any way I can manage. Who says they don’t make left handed manual pencil sharpeners?
3 Comments
July 20, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Wow, this really brings back memories. I remember that kind of pencil sharpener from way back in elementary school, before I switched to the clickable ever-sharps. I think you’re right about how things were just sturdier when we were kids. I bet Timothy is just thrilled with it all!
July 27, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Timothy is my kind of guy. I just love his pencil sharpener. Call me odd, but there is something deeply satisfying about sharpening pencils. I used to volunteer to do it all the time in school. I definitely want a sharpener like that!
August 6, 2009 at 11:03 am
Sounds like there should be a store for just left handed people, a place where southpaw’s aren’t the minority, a place where lefties are #1, but what would this left handed emporium be called???? I got it “The Leftorium”!!!!!!!!!!!