Game 4: Pencils

Remember second grade, I sure do. While I only vaguely remember learning my long addition and subtraction and the history of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, I remember writing stories with the crooked newly learned alphabet a little better. One thing I remember very clearly is how I loved my pencils. They always had to be nice and sharp. In second grade you have to raise your hand for perrmission to sharpen your pencil. That was fine with me even though I was shy, it was worth it for a nice sharp pencil.

Carlos, a boy in my class, liked sharp pencils also. During a period of free time, in my little second grade imagination, Carlos and I were on a pirate ship. We were dressed in pirate garb he with a hook and I with a pegged leg. My men and I had just boarded his ship in an attempt to steel the loot that his men had just stolen from a imperial sailors. While our men were fighting and dying around us we faced off and drew our swords. This was not the first time Carlos and I had met. We had a long history of plundering together and ever since a recent spat, we had formed our own crews and were consumed with plundering each other. While I would have never admitted it back then, I probably started the whole spat and concordantly I desired what I got. After a bitter sword fight with plenty of good moves on both sides, and after I began to get cocky, feeling that I had him where I wanted him, He made a desperate jab. Because of my carelessness, his jab caught me in the arm. The pain consumed my body. This was really strange because I was a pirate and the wound was merely flesh deep.

All of the sudden the reality came swirling into view. We were not on a pirate ship, but were still in our second grade class. We were not fight with swords, we were fight with our new sharped pencils, and his sword had not cut my arm but his pencil was sticking into me. Because I was not a pirate and just a second grader, the pain made a lot more sense and I began to cry. To this day, I can still see the lead mark in my forearm.