The Napkin Leading to Reflections on a Pencil Sharpener Incident

Recently, I reached into our napkin basket to grab, what I knew was, the last napkin. And I get this:

Seriously? Gross.

Finding USED napkins in your napkin basket is exactly the type of shit no one tells you about before you decide to spawn offspring. That and, when you clean out the backseat of your car, you'll find half a waffle, 2 handfuls of bunny cereal, a few Kix, an empty Kleenex box with a toy bug in it, 2 Elmo books, and 3 broken CD cases. Yes, that's actually what I cleaned out of my car the other day.

I reflect on how much my life has changed since having a kid like 423,928 times a day. Oh sure, there's lots of good things. But you've already heard all the crap about how fulfilling it is, how much love you have, how seeing your kid smile is worth the world like a million times. I'm not here to discuss that. No one gives a shit about that stuff, really.

I'm here to discuss pencils.

A few weeks ago, I wandered around my house collecting pencils. The Happy Birthday one, the Thanksgiving one, the heart one, the striped one, the SMC one...I tossed them into my mom bag and toted them to work the next day. Why, you ask? Have the school's budget cuts gotten so bad they now require teachers to provide their own pencils? Nope, although next year I fully expect for our superintendent to tell us that in order to save money, we now have to teach our 57 students in the dark and downgrade from #2 to #1 pencils.


The pencils from my home that I collected were not for my students. Those pencils actually do live in my house. My house that is missing a piece of equipment used relatively sparingly, but vital to the life of a pencil. A pencil sharpener.


Ok, to be fair, we do have one. It's on a shelf in a closet, I believe. But the fact that I find it easier to use the high mileage pencil sharpener sitting in my classroom is the perfect evidence of how your life changes when you have a kid.


Our pencil sharpener is the symbol of life before baby. Before baby, our extra room had a guest bed (which means we actually had guests occasionally!). It had shelves full of pictures, novels, and various breakable dust collectors. It had a desk. And on that desk, hidden amongst piles of papers, a stapler, the computer, and a stack of blank CD's was, you guessed it, the pencil sharpener. It was plugged in at all times, ready to spring into action at the mere sight of a dull piece of lead making its way towards the tiny hole adorning the front plastic plate. The satisfying whirring that occurred as each lifeless writing utensil was given a 2nd chance was reassuring. I never questioned where my next fine point would come from.


Then came the kid. The bed gave way to a crib. the pictures and trinkets to stuffed animals and teething rings. The books were stored in the garage. The cord from the pencil sharpener was unplugged, unceremoniously, to give life to the baby monitor.



After several months of sneaking in to use the computer during nap time, and getting caught doing it, thus ruining nap time (which is SACRED and should NEVER be fucked with!), we rearranged. The desk was sold on Craigslist. The computer was given a new home on a tiny computer desk in our ever-cluttered living room. The pencil sharpener? Banished to its new home: the closet.

The mere thought of dragging it out for something as simple as sharpening a pencil has proved too cumbersome. So it sits, unused. I take comfort in knowing it's not lonely, since it sits next to the uglyass outfit my mother in law gave my son for Christmas and my basket of scrap booking shit, both also unused.


Because our pencil sharpener is doomed to live its life on a shelf (at least until the housing market changes and we can move out of our tiny shit hole), every month or so, I gather all of our pencils, toss them in my ginormous mom bag, and take them to work where I sharpen them.

(Not my actual bag, but close. Actually, this one's cuter. Damn it)

I had a baby, so sure, I have a house full of love, smiles, fulfillment, and blahdeblahblahblah. I also have a car full of old food and broken shit, as well as a house full of dirty napkins and dull pencils.