Pencils lose out to pens in modern life

I don’t like being last. Not that I ever come in first, but that’s really only because I… I don’t like being last. Not that I ever come in first, but that’s really only because I choose not to: The tallest blade of grass, they say, is always the first to be mowed down. I enjoy the security and comfort of sticking with the herd. After all, we’ve all seen the Discovery Channel documentaries where an overzealous baby zebra decides to break from the pack and ventures just a little deeper into the lake. The alligators eat him. And I am determined not to be that zebra.

It is for this reason that I started getting very nervous in my first year of college when I noticed all my peers had long switched to pens while I was still sporting pencils. I’d steal furtive glances at those all around me, in libraries and in lecture halls, those multitudes who had escaped into the realm of adulthood and had discarded their childhood playthings such as the weak, impotent writing utensil that is the pencil. And there was I, their peer but not quite their equal, bumbling around, pausing every few seconds to sharpen my pencil with my portable sharpener. I was, in essence, the poster boy for a “Child Left Behind.”

Back in the day, pencils offered innumerable advantages, one of which being that they were distributed freely at schools. If you hated a certain teacher and felt like being a rebel, you could walk to the pencil sharpener and grind away for a minute or 20. Pencil smudged easily, so you could quickly destroy any written evidence with the quick swipe of a sweaty hand. Plus, you could really bling it out with colorful grips and eraser caps.

Best of all, you could rectify any writing errors and erase with the freedom otherwise unavailable to 6-year-olds. And let’s face it, we kind of needed that opportunity to fix our mistakes: Being a 6-year-old is pretty much like being an inebriated 23-year-old. You don’t really know what you’re doing, you don’t have complete control over your body movements – the word “wobbly” comes to mind – and you really aren’t generating the most intelligent of thoughts. It truly was an idyllic era.

But then the teachers swooped in and changed our lives as we knew them. I think they were kind of frightened about the prospect of a thousand students running around with sharpened wooden sticks. Whatever the reason, we now had to write in pen, and we had to write in cursive. I embraced the cursive, actually – the principal wasn’t going to believe any Ferris Bueller-esque excuse if my “mom” block-printed her signature on the bottom – and I actually became quite good at it.

But they’d still have to pry the pencil out of my cold, dead hands. I was just too stuck in my ways. I liked being able to make my mistakes. Of course, I did succumb to peer pressure sometimes, and yes, I did experiment with pens. It was nothing serious, maybe just writing a quick note or drawing fake tattoos on myself, and I never really liked it. It was an expensive habit to maintain, and when I saw that it was pens that drove angry high schoolers to draw graffiti on the bathroom stalls, I quit then and there. Pens just weren’t for me.

I have since come to the conclusion after nearly three years of higher education that I’m incapable of making mistakes. Really, I’m pretty much infallible. I never use erasers. Heck, I never even used the backspace or delete key when typing this column. And I’ll admit that pencils do have their place in society – like while someone’s sitting up against a wall of the Cathedral of Learning with an art portfolio leisurely sketching or doing something similarly creative – but while I am impervious to mistakes, I’m not impervious to sucking at art. And yes, you do look smart if you are writing in pencil because it’s a very Civil War thing to do, and we love looking like the strong, silent, reflective type.

But having chicks “oohhh” at my quiet wisdom does me little good when my pencil lead keeps breaking because of my intensely muscular arm. And I hate accidentally stabbing myself in awkward places when I sit down with a newly sharpened pencil in my pocket. So, pens it is.

Of course, my decision isn’t as monumental as it would have been 20 years ago. Thanks to touch typing, we are a generation of weak-fingered students who can’t scrawl out a paragraph or two without collapsing with hand cramps. After finals week last semester I couldn’t even hold up my cereal spoon the next morning. It’s kind of sad and ironic given that our species has flourished because of, you know, our strong opposable thumbs. I learned that on the Discovery Channel, too.

All this thinking leaves me a little conflicted and just a bit pensive. Aren’t there bigger issues at stake than pencil vs. pen? Was I wrong to have abandoned so quickly my support of the pencil’s graphite greatness? What do our weak digits mean for the future of humankind? And then I remember I’m in college, and I don’t have time to think such whimsical thoughts. I also remember that I’m 20 and should be worrying about more normal things. So let’s leave it at that: The baby zebra is back among the safe company of the herd.

I’ll figure out the fate of the human race after finals.

Don’t get Ravi started on college-ruled vs. wide-ruled notebooks. E-mail him at rrp10@pitt.edu.