The Pencil

It's a déjà vu feeling, really. I was in class yesterday and the picture of my friend loading a graphite lead into his mechanical pencil reminded me of the day my dad bought me my first mechanical pencil.

It was back in 1999 on a dark winter evening. I was in 3rd grade then. My parents had just come back home with a bunch of groceries and stuff. They kept them aside and my dad turned towards at me and said,"son, look what I got you" and he took out a small packet and showed it to me. "This is the new engineers' pencil, made in Germany."  The excitement on my smile priceless. 

It had a red body with 3 black stripes which were carved out near the griping area and had a black butt. It was very new in those days and I was just a kid. My sister and I might have gotten into a little argument over who gets to keep it. We took turns using it before we got a second one. I think we were possessed by it, at least I was, and I used it as often as possible. I took it to school and showed it to my friends and they all gazed at it  in amazement.

I miss those simple days. They were good.