the pencil had a point, but this doesn't

Here is something dumb. There’s this pencil, it’s white and seems to be from both Cimarron Insurance Company, Inc., in Kansas, and the Akron Loan Company in Colorado. It has a little orange logo thing on one side, and has a sort of chewed-up look to it. I accidentally stole it the last time I made Anton, CO, my very temporary home.

I guess I got kind of attached to it. It lay on my dresser for a long time, sprawled out across the book manuscript I’d been using it on when the accidental theft was perpetrated. Every time I saw it there (or almost every time), I thought about sitting in the Herrons’ dining room, reading that manuscript and taking notes on it, and twisting that pencil around and around while I tried to think of what I was thinking about. I also thought what a burglar I was, and how funny it was that I should give thought to the burgling of a pencil, and how I’d better return it to its rightful masters anyway. I meant to send it home with Luke when he ventured into the northern reaches of Iowa in August; but I forgot.

I remembered it when I came back to Colorado a week and a half ago, and laid it safely to rest in the drawer where it belongs. One would think that ought to be the end of the story (although inordinate levels of boringness may prevent this tale from actually qualifying as a “story”).

Today, though, in the absence of other immediate activity, I decided to get that manuscript back out and see about finishing with it. I realized that I would need a pencil. I went to the drawer where the pencils are and looked inside. Pens and pencils there were in abundance, but I was seized suddenly with an intense desire to find my old stolen pencil back, and use it as I had in days of yore. I was seized also by a lost sense of panic at the thought that, having returned my old stolen pencil to its proper place of residence, it might easily (and perfectly lawfully, which made it worse) have begun once again to be used by its true owners; and might have been relocated to another region of the house; and might never again be gazed upon by my longing eyes.

I dug through the basket of writing utensils, forward and backward, scrabbling, alarmed at my alarm. I did not want an orange pencil. I wanted my pencil. My precious? Nah.

At any rate, I dug and scrabbled away, and started getting really sad about the whole business, when at last I found my pencil. Except it’s still not really mine, and if I take it home with me again it will be a double burglary, which might be punishable by death.

In other news, my hands smell like grilled hamburger, and my left leg is falling asleep from me sitting on it for too long.