“Can I borrow a pencil?”
One of the most ubiquitous questions that is asked every school year and one that is likely the most dreaded. Perhaps you left yours on your desk, or you left it at home, leaving you to wonder whether it was lost due to your carelessness or from the theft of a fellow classmate.
When you forget a pencil, you probably feel the need to declare a State of Emergency; the reality of high school is such that class moves on even if you aren’t prepared. In this scenario, you are left to rely on a peer, who may or may not have a spare pencil on them.
However, when you are on the receiving end of a request for a pencil, you are faced with another dilemma: If you don’t have a spare pencil, you’ve let a friend down. If you do have a pencil, and you choose to lend it, you are doing so with the expectation that you might never see it again. You must come to terms with the reality that after a class period, both you and the receiver of your pencil will forget that the transaction for the pencil has occurred in the first place.
Occasionally, a fortunate instance of recollection will allow you to remember that you lent someone a pencil or that the pencil that you have must be returned to the person who borrowed it to you. Unfortunately, this usually happens days or weeks after the pencil switched hands, and in the time that it has taken you to remember, the pencil has already been lost again. Borrowed pencils are lost pencils.
As a solution, I find it helpful to buy a more expensive mechanical pencil, as the monetary value of the pencil prompts you to not lose it in the future. Strangely, once a pencil becomes a larger investment, I found that I was much less likely to lose it. Something nicer could also allow you to make the claim that the pencil is yours when you misplace it in class, since it’s likely not as generic as a standard Ticonderoga #2. Not to mention, with a reliable mechanical pencil, you no longer have to be the student that is annoyingly sharpening a dull pencil in the middle of a critical lesson.
We can avoid the dreaded situation where we ask to “borrow” pencils by taking care of our own pencils. Maybe, occasionally make an exception for your forgetful friends.