We are conditioned to believe in the semi-permanence of things. Our actions have no recourse, and our decisions affect very little than the moment in which they are made. We think that one thing does not in fact lead to another, that nothing builds in order to dictate some kind of outcome. Nothing is permanent, and so nothing can affect us. Minutely, hourly, daily, our pasts are expunged. We shower off what we have known every couple of seconds, making room for what we have yet to be, to experience. The only way we live is by recognizing that nothing lasts forever. But, we are fooling ourselves. Nothing goes away, and we have given ourselves a lifelong dosage of denial.
I was ten when my life became structured around the pursuit of an oxymoron. It was the fourth grade, and it was where pencils came to die. In my previous years of schooling, everything had revolved around the pencil. Was it sharpened? Was it No. 2? Had it rolled off of my desk? Was it mechanical? Did it have the proper lead replacements? Had I chewed on it? Why? Everything seemed to exist and function because of the pencil. Mistakes were erased, drafts were written lightly, and backs of pages were used and legible. However, as much as the pencil added to the academic setting, it also retracted from it.
Kids get wise around the age of 8. They begin to notice the truth about adults. Adults, it turns out, are not super humans. At the same time, teachers, normally held in equal regard with the President, prove to be adults, and therefore, prove to be fallible. They can’t see the notes you pass when they are turned around. They cannot know if you were running or walking if they were not there to witness it. And, they won’t always remember that you did, in fact, get an answer wrong on a test if you erase it and replace it with the right one. Teachers do not, in fact, know, hear, and see all evil. But, every now and then, they can catch it.
During my third grade year, a couple of the fourth-grade teachers began doing a little lobbying in the teacher’s lounge. Apparently, the class ahead of mine had a little too comfortable with unassigned test corrections. These teachers were begging for the pen. It’s a hysterical image if you really think about it. A group of designated faculty members crowded in the teachers lounge, sneaking cigarettes and devouring grocery store birthday cake, fiercely debating what age is appropriate for the commencement of pen usage. It’s amazing what becomes important when you become responsible for elementary age human beings. Things like guarding the ice machine in the cafeteria and keeping boys out of the girl’s bathroom become far more important than say, war in the Middle East or marriage.
It was ultimately decided that fourth grade would be the year students switched to pen. When my class caught wind of our impending pen privileges, we were thrilled. Of course, up until this point we had never desired to use pens instead of pencils, yet now the attitude of finally fled rapidly through the air. Finally! Some rights! We began to associate the use of a pen with the teachers’ acknowledgment that we were swiftly approaching that age when you got to do all the things you had always wanted to do. The pen was only the beginning of an impending flood of opportunities. Going to the bathroom without a bathroom pass. Taking the elevator instead of the stairs. The end of sitting in alphabetical order. These were all within our reach. Yet, none was so special as the pen.
I could hardly sleep the night before my first day of fourth grade. My mind kept churning with ideas of how using a pen would ultimately change my life. How perfect it would look when I wrote my name. How prominent it would be on the pages of my workbooks. How it would withstand at least two bath times when written on the skin. Nothing had ever been so exciting.
On the morning of the first day, each of us stood outside our appointed classrooms, impatiently waiting for the bell to ring, and the teachers to unlock their doors. At the first sound of the bell, we stampeded into the room and hurried to find an open desk. There it was, lying neatly in the holder at the top of the desk: the pen. The pen I had pined for the entire summer. The pen whose ink I had longed to bleed on the pages before me. It was here. I picked the pen at my desk up and held it at eye level to fully admire its beauty. But, immediately, something was wrong. “What is this,” I thought. The cap of the pen had an eraser on it. Pens were not supposed to have erasers. "What is this?” I asked aloud.
Mrs. Taylor was my fourth-grade teacher, and she was of an odd breed. Every day she wore a white tank top with a flannel over it and beige slacks. She wore Yellow Box flip flops through all the seasons,and seemed to have at least 10 pairs. She had a reputation for being highly involved in the love lives of her students, serving as a sort of matchmaker. A student in the grade above had told me that Mrs. Taylor sometimes sat a boy and a girl next to each other if she thought they may "hit it off." In fact, I got my first "boyfriend" thanks to Mrs. Taylor’s seating arrangements in the cafeteria. His name was Trey. We never spoke, but Mrs. Taylor handled our publicity as a couple. When Trey gave me a necklace for Valentine’s Day, Mrs. Taylor made me take it off and pass it around the room for the other students to see. Unfortunately, I did not get to keep the necklace. Trey had stolen it out of his mother’s jewelry box, and she was demanding that I give it back. Mrs. Taylor thought this was hilarious, she thought our whole relationship was hilarious. But, when Trey and I broke up, she took it pretty hard.
Mrs. Taylor had noticed that I seemed distraught and came to see if anything was wrong.
“Why does it have an eraser,” I asked.
“It’s an erasable pen!” Mrs. Taylor replied.
“Why?” I asked again.
“Why?! So if you make a mistake, you can correct it!”
Mrs. Taylor smiled at me and nodded her head. I could tell that she was trying to get me to be excited about the pen having an eraser. I did not feel excited, I only felt betrayed. I had spent 4 months waiting, and preparing, and anticipating the day that I would be able to use a pen. And here it was, and it was a lie. It was a pen but it had an eraser. It was like some kind of misplaced hybrid, or an unexplainable food combination that advertisers use to grab the attention of sick teenagers. It was a pen, yes. It had ink and a plastic body. But, it had an eraser. It was a knock-off, a fake pen, a "fen." It was purely wrong.
I never adjusted to this erasable pen. I felt like a fraud every time I erased the ink. I began to think my friends and my classmates were all neanderthals for accepting something so obviously wrong. Were they not bothered by these teachers’ tricks? Did they not feel cheated and used? Did they not loathe the smudges of leftover ink the eraser left on the pages? Or the holes. rips, and tears that resulted for erasing too hard? Ink is permanent. Writing in pen was supposed to be permanent. It was supposed to signify responsibility and growth. But, I only felt stunted. I was right on the brink of this new adventure, and there, blocking my path, was an eraser.
I admit that I may have overreacted to the implementation of the erasable pen into my schooling. I have come to realize that while it was an erasable pen, it was still a pen. Yet, I cannot seem to shake my ideas on how the erasable pen speaks to a much larger issue than the one I had with it. The erasable pen is our acceptance of semi-permanence, of a "zilched" past manifested. A pen is meant to permanent, yet we create them with erasers to reject their permanence. It is now as easy to correct a mistake made in pencil as it is to correct one made in pen. This is not the way it was meant to be. Pens, our actions, our decisions, our lives, they are permanent. They have effects and are affected. Nothing that we do is ever negated whether we personally choose to neglect it our not. We cannot proceed to think that we could have a future if we do not recognize our past. Everything we have done, the culmination of our lives, it is all permanent. Nothing is erased.
I think deep down, for these reasons, I still hate the erasable pen. I hate what it signifies. We cannot erase what we don’t want. We cannot erase what is permanent. Whether we like it or not, everything we have done, decided, acted on, it is all permanent. It cannot be erased. But, we should find comfort in this, not distraught. For without our certain pasts, we would not be in line for our certain futures. The good and the bad all lead to something. We can choose to rid ourselves of it, or we can choose to be there for it. Regardless, we have stop believing in the impermanence of things.
