The pencil stub is still waiting for me.
We sometimes take great joy in small things — and those small things are so often the memories of long ago. Everyone remembers the games they played with a dear childhood friend, or how it felt to fall in love for the first time. But what calls all these memories back to us are the objects of that time.
For me, that object was a pencil.
As a boy, I would come home from school and settle down to my homework. Lying flat on the floor, wetting the tip with my tongue as I wrote, I would wear a pencil down until it was no more than a stub. When it grew too short to hold, I would fit it into the barrel of a ballpoint pen and keep on writing. These stubs — proof of how hard I had studied — I gathered up and kept like treasure. That heap of worn-down pencils was my proudest possession. It felt as though each and every one of them would somehow lift my grades a little higher.
Technology moves on. Now we use mechanical pencils. They are convenient and practical: no sharpening required, always a fine point at the ready.
Yet a mechanical pencil carries none of the warmth that the pencil stubs of my childhood held. It seems to have been reduced to a mere instrument for putting words on paper.
In those lean years, I poured my whole heart into every letter I wrote with a pencil stub. With that small pencil, I drew great dreams. Each time I began a new chapter, sharpening my pencil felt like a ritual — a rite of new beginnings. Into even that simple act, I folded my dreams and my hopes and sent them on their way.
Now I am grown, living a life that asks me to juggle its many complications. I am deeply grateful for modern conveniences like the mechanical pencil, yet at times I find myself longing for the simplicity and the pure ardor of those days — for something like the pencil stub of my childhood.
My pencil stub is still waiting for me. It reminds me of my dreams, of the nostalgia of childhood, and of the innocent eyes with which I once looked upon the world. Sometimes I want to set down the mechanical pencil, pick up that old stub, and write out a small dream once more — hoping, all the while, that it will grow into a great one.
Sources
Every factual claim above is traceable. We do not translate articles — we gather facts from multiple outlets and write them ourselves.
- 침 발라가며 쓴 몽당연필 — 청람서루 · Kim Wang-sik
