Identifying the most fundamental, basic and essential tool in the shop would be difficult.  But, I think that the yellow #2 wood pencil might get my vote.  From my earliest years, the yellow pencil symbolized achievement and creation.  The moment that you learn how to grasp with authority that slim instrument, and to master the ability to draw recognizable shapes and letters, you know as a child that you have crossed a bold line from little kid to adult skills.

Even today, my best thinking flows through the end of a yellow #2 wood pencil.  Although my days are filled with email and software development related tasks, no process better focuses the mind than moving away from the computer and jotting down notes on paper using the yellow pencil.  Psychological perhaps, but few things about the pencil distract you from your focus.  The computer waits upon your every command or whim with a myriad things to distract the point of your attention, and to erase fluid thought.

My oldest daughter, Jenny, collected pencils for a season.  Prized pencils come in bright colors with bold writing along the sides that remind you of someone’s value to the community.  Pencils covered with fluid shapes and colors grab the covetous nature within, but reject your intentions of use.  Purposing to sharpen such a creation produces inaudible screams of ruination within the mind, and so those works of art lay in boxes alongside other trophies of shopping expeditions, existing only to be shifted aside as the finger and eye probe for something useful, like a plain, solid color pencil.

Once acquired, a pencil belongs to one person.  An unspoken rule existed as a child that everyone knew in the core of his or her person.  You don’t take or use another person’s pencil.  Heck, the bite mark ornamentation of another’s pencil deterred any thought of touching it.  But, when you get right down to the core, maybe taking another’s pencil is sin.

Before marriage to Judy, I had a short-term painting job on a remodel.  Not possessing a vehicle, I got to the house by running the two miles each way.  I left my timesheet and my pencil on a closet shelf since I did not want to carry it back and forth every day.  One day a guy showed up to fix some other things at the house.  Amazingly, he found and stole my pencil!  Outraged, I pawed through his open toolbox in secret until I found one of his crappy pencils and with a dark cloud following me, I squirreled it away where he would not find it.  But, all night it bothered me that I had violated a cardinal rule.  You don’t take another’s pencil.

The next morning on my run to work, I stopped dead in my tracks when I spied two brand new sharpened yellow pencils lying on the sidewalk before me.  Surely, God has a sense of humor and gentle in His reproof.  I violated an innate rule for a measly two cent, half used pencil.  But He provided me with two new ones.  The message was clear — one for me, and one for the other thief.

Well, I ran around the office the other day looking for a plain old #2 yellow pencil, and only an abandoned one turned up.  Later, I went to the grocery store and purchased a 10-pack of brand new yellow Dixon pencils.  They were on sale, and I felt relieved to know that stores still sell them.  Two stayed in the office and the rest came home to the shop with me.

Of course there is a website about pencils.  Watch out though, they sell those fancy kind, including some that smell good.  But consider carefully before buying those crazy round pencils.  They will sit behind your ear as well as the hexagonal pencil, but round pencils require constant attention when you lay them down.  People with real jobs don’t have time to chase round pencils all day long as they yearn to fall off your table.  Get one that stays put, waiting and ready for you to pick it up again and get to work.

What about you?  Do you think best with a pencil?  Do you care if pencils exist or not?  I am at peace today, because I have 10 new #2 yellow wood pencils, and I know that I will be able to think and create for 10 pencils longer.