Eddie Merkel

So I was just cruising the internet one night a few weeks ago and came across a story about the best pencil in the world.  Being that I am a self styled neo-luddite who is always looking for ways to prove that to myself and others, I instantly decided that I had to have some of these great pencils.  I did check out some reviews in advance of ordering: yes you can actually find reviews of pencils on the internet.  At any rate I found them on pencils.com and $22 and change later I had a dozen of them on their way to my house.

Now that I have used these for a couple of weeks I feel I can speak intelligently about them.  In short I am very happy!  For years and years I have used pens almost exclusively.  If I used a pencil to write it was a mechanical one.  The only wood pencils I ever used (perhaps since I was in high school) were colored pencils for drawing and I didn’t use them much.  I knew writing with these was going to be different because they would have to be sharpened, being left handed the edge of my hand would wind up covered with graphite and the page would be smudged, and I would probably get a callous on my middle finger again like I had in school as well.  The reality is different and in some surprising ways better as well.

I mentioned that I was a neo-luddite.  This also may just be because I am so old, but in almost all things I still like paper better than digital.  I like reading paper books better than on a Kindle or other reader, I take all my notes at work on paper, I have a paper journal, a paper planner (that I do dovetail with an electronic calendar) and I really like writing real snail-mail letters.  Using paper for these things I find extends the actual experience of using them beyond just the utility or the entertainment value that they offer.  The tactile/sensory element that paper offers is almost as big a part of the experience for me as the actual “thing” itself.  That said, you can probably see why I am just the person to spend $22 for a pack of old school wood pencils.  I was really not knowing what to expect, but what I got was so much more than what I thought that I may never ever be without a wood pencil again.

When I first sharpened the first pencil, the first thing I got was the smell!  In your mind send yourself back to grade-school and stand yourself in front of the pencil sharpener mounted on the wall by the blackboard and grind away.  Do you recall that wood and graphite smell?  That hit me full in the face and gave me such a comfortable feeling that I knew right away I was going to like this.  Then, the second surprise that sealed the deal in my mind was the sound of the pencils flowing across the paper.  Not a scratching like mechanical pencils make so much as a flowing, sliding sound.  Graphite music in my ears.

In addition to what I got that I wasn’t expecting, I found I didn’t get some of what I was: these pencils don’t smudge and the outside of my hand and little finger do not wind up silver.  I still am expecting the callous.

I know it’s nuts to write this much about a damn pencil.  But it’s not only the pencil: it’s the idea that something has practically disappeared from the normal office and home (except where kids are still in school) that can offer so much still but isn’t because “technology” has moved past it and left it behind.  How much of that kind of thing is there?  The flip side of that question that I am working on in my head every day is, how much of what we have now could we do better without?