I'm definitely into pencils

When I was growing up, we lived in a lovely old yellow farmhouse with green shutters and a wide porch, and a big red barn leaned into the woods at the edge of the back yard. While the house hosted a rowdy family, the barn was my dad's domain where he puttered (and occasionally hid, I assume) and my sisters and I would either spy on him while he was in there, or we'd snoop around when he wasn't. One of the rooms hosted a rusted-out car, ladders, cans of paint, jars of chemical-smelling liquids, and various domestic debris, and the other was ringed with shelves and tools and work benches, and I remember so clearly the pencils hanging about that weren't school pencils, conically sharpened and fuzzy at the wood, but whittled to sharp shiny points. And this wasn't something I've thought about for years and years, until recently when I was gathering up all the pencils in the bindery, and noticed how they're sharpened in the same exact way, thoughtfully, with knives, instead of sharpeners.

And I've gotten used to this myself, quickly chopping pencils into wedge-shaped points with a utility knife, but it still makes me happy to come across them, to slice them up myself. I suppose this isn't even noteworthy, but I honestly haven't seen hand-sharpened pencils since my childhood, and this fact alone - the fact that its something I went years and years without noticing, and that suddenly I see them again - it's just so nice to be pleasantly surprised by an old memory. Ah pencils. They are so great!