as published in The Sun Post News February 25, 2012:
“I need an eraser!” Blake cries, my kindergartner announcing yet one more delay in his homework routine. In writing his name three times, he’s gone off the grid with a clumsy letter B.
I pull open the junk drawer to find nine pencils, zero erasers-- all rubbed raw by the fact this very kid has reached kindergarten.
Oh, to be five. Their homework so easy, so whimsical, their innocent little minds still working out the basics in life: that a ‘B’ starts at the top, a straight line and two rounded humps. And if you get it all wrong, you can just erase it.
I think back to my pencil days. Days when I held my mom’s hand all the way to the classroom door, when I didn’t care if I matched, when I had Rainbow Brite birthday parties and truly believed I could be Princess Leah when I grew up. These were the days when our mistakes were so vast and so vague and so easily forgiven and forgotten in the name of childhood. Broken dishes, wasted food, and messy rooms diffused by a parent’s hug who knew we didn’t do it on purpose. Erased.
We get five or six elementary years of freshly sharpened #2’s before the school supply lists demand ink, declaring we shouldn’t be making so many mistakes. And that if we do, a new supply-- a RED pen-- will remediate us. Our infractions are now called out in a bloodbath induced by the nasty, nose-picking grader seated behind us, held up for all to see. Our grace period over. Harsh as adolescence.
Our minds-- still mushy, still formulating-- become warped by the bigger kids who didn’t get the parents’ hugs and want to pummel us for it. They stand so eager to never forget, never erase the time we bumped into them or the time we liked whatshisface. Unforgiving as black ink, overly dramatic as a red pen, we are labelled and it feels permanent.
Enter adulthood and now our every move is propelled into the cold receptacle of cyberspace, to be tried by an anonymous world we make our community. We invest our time and trust in an elusive cloud, precipitous with viruses and theft. Our timid childhood strokes replaced by keys and wires, our erasers superseded by spell check. And we become convinced that this mechanical world will protect us from making any mistakes, from ever really needing to connect, to communicate, to feel.
“Mom! I still need an eraser!” my little Blake proclaims.
I look at his errant B, the top hump bigger than the bottom, the whole thing a little bit crooked. So kindergarten. So vulnerable. And as I hand him a warm, wooden pencil with a fleshy, pink eraser, I say, “I know, Blake. It’s okay.”
