6/7/2006 - Plastic Pencils
Years and years ago when I attended things like youth group, we had many craft projects to keep our young minds occupied while our parents had a well deserved break. Part of our craft projects was creating Pencil People – we’d glue pompoms and cotton balls to pencils and attach ‘eyes’ and decorate with glitter and lace. Definitely fun, and apparently my sense of style and art has changed drastically since those days! Anyway, my mother always kept our ‘treasures’ in a box for some reason, the way I guess most mother’s always keep their kids’ crappy attempts at art. A while ago when I was looking for something else I came across the Pencil People – talk about a blast from the past!
Why am I telling you this? All the Pencil People were made out of PLASTIC PENCILS! Anyone who has EVER used a slate and pencil underwater will know the unending frustration of having the wood split and losing your graphite. With plastic pencils, that doesn’t happen! It’s just like a normal wooden pencil, instead of having wood though, plastic surrounds the graphite!
Unfortunately, I only made three Pencil People – one red, one green and one blue. I, much to my mother’s chagrin, callously ripped the pompoms and glitter and eyes off the pencils and commandeered them for my slates. I have yet to find plastic pencils in any stores, and am greedily guarding my green and blue ones until such a time as I can replace them (my red one is attracting far too much attention of the "can I borrow your pencil?" variety). If anyone knows where I might find plastic pencils, I would be most indebted to you!
And no, I don’t like pacers. They rust and anything that technical has an intrinsic dislike for me and deliberately doesn’t work. The leads never stay in, or never come out, and I’m always loosing bits of the damn pencils.
Anyway, these plastic pencils were apparently known as "Tree Saver Pencils" but I can't find them anywhere, and I think they'd make an ideal christmas gift for some of my DMs and fellow instructor's who have the same issues with slates & pencils that I do! I mean, how frustrating is it on those deep dives where you give your students the slate with a question, and they can't answer because the graphite fell out of the pencil?! Always makes me feel like a bit of a loser.
Lastly, Tree Saver Pencils save the trees and protect the environment - long live the Koala's!
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