Why I Love a Pencil – Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

Why I Love a Pencil – Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

There were more reasons not to like sharpening pencils in elementary school, but pencils now remind me of the days when I emptied a sharpener full of shavings into the trash bucket at the teacher’s desk. No, it wasn’t because I liked cranking the hand-powered pencil sharpener. No, it wasn’t because I wanted a break from the monotony of schoolwork. I just loved using a sharp pencil, perhaps as early as the third grade.

I love the smell of a pencil; holding it to my nose when I take a break from writing. Its fragrant woody scent of cedar and varnish nicely marries to the sooty smell of lead and yellow paint. You can move along the length of the pencil to the ferrule (that crimped metal ring that holds the eraser) to capture the familiar clean smell of rubber.

Sharpening a pencil? Nowadays, I like the whirl of the automatic sharpener as I twirl the pencil to even the cut.  My grandchildren were so fascinated with it that they non-stop sharpened my pencils to the nib. “Stop that! It’s sharp enough. And be careful of the point.”

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When I’m in a sharpening pinch, there is always the tiny handheld device, the kind you find in an old pencil box or in the top drawer of your desk.

I love to hold a pencil because my fingers rest predictably in the right place on the hexagonal ribbed surfaces.

You can do stuff with a pencil, like tap it on the desk when you’re looking for just the right word. You can use two of them for drumsticks to tap out rhythms. You can use the point to scratch your itchy head (it’s hard to stop) or run it along the radiator. It makes such a lovely rattlety tap, tap, tap. Or, you can chew on it.

And then there is always the writing. I love the number two pencil, its lead just soft enough for writing clear, crisp, readable words.

The modern pencil was invented in 1795 by Nicholas-Jacques Conte, a scientist in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. The material he used was a form of pure carbon called graphite discovered in Bavaria at the start of the fifteenth century.

Initially, the black lead was called plumbago (hence ‘plumbers’ who repair lead water pipes). It was called graphite from the Greek word graphein meaning to write. The word pencil is from the Latin, pencillus, little tail, to describe the small ink brushes used for writing in the Middle Ages.

I like the soft lead. Check the pencil’s marking: H stands for hard; B stands for black; HB, hard black. The hardness of the graphite core is also marked with a number. The higher the number, the harder the core and the lighter the mark left on the paper. I love a dark mark when I write, so use a number 2 pencil.

And my pencils must have an eraser that does not dry out.

Next week, more about pencils. In the meantime, can you quote any pencil phrases?

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more here.