Pencil Problems

Every day for years, the pencil watched through the clear plastic of the pencil case, as the children ran and danced and played. Smiles burst through the children's faces as they spun to the sound of musical laughter. He longed to join them, to spin and twirl in fluid motions, to laugh and smile and to escape the rigid prison of his holder. Every day it was the same, he would lay on his side and envy the joyous children who moved so freely and when they all left the pencil would replay all their movements in his mind to try to replicate them, but he never made it off his side.

Until one day, when a small boy open the pencil case and grabbed the pencil with his pudgy little fingers. The boy crossed the room to sit down at a wooden table where the other little children where. The boy rested the pencil between his finger tips and the pencil began to dance across a white dancefloor. The pencil twirled and spun, ran and walked, the pencil leaped across the page and began again on a new one. Wherever the pencil went he left a charcoal trail of his giddy adventure. The pencil was the happiest he had ever been and the children where elated to see the pencil having so much fun.

After that day, the pencil was the favorite out of all his peers in the case. As soon as the children returned, they would rush to be the one able to use the pencil that day. He lived his happiest life twirling dancing and playing every day, finally living up to his dreams. When his point dulled the children would put his head in a metal contraption to sharpen it once again and he would continue fluttering across the spread.

Days of joy filled the pencils life, but he started to notice a problem. He became shorter and shorter as he grew older, to the point his oldest friend, the boy with pudgy fingers couldn't even hold on to the pencils shaft anymore. A girl with long slender fingers had taken up being the pencil's guardian but even she complained of hand cramps taking their toll. But the pencil danced on enjoying every moment of it.

One day the girl began to write with the pencil and his tip once again began to dull, she walked over to the metal beast but the beast did nothing. The girl walked back to the pencil case and tossed the poor pencil in. The pencil too began to cry, he had experienced the joy of free movement and knew what it was like to dance, but now, one again he was trapped, all because he danced too much.