One day, my mom took me the store to buy a pencil. I looked at the rack of pencils for a while and finally decided I wanted the one that had pianos on it.  When we got home, I sharpened it right away. I still had to do math, so I got my math book and started writing. I got to a math problem (one that I didn’t like) and got it wrong. I was very mad, because it had taken me a long time to solve it. Then I thought of a good thing about it: I would get to use the eraser on the pencil. I always liked using an eraser for the first time, because it was so clean and new.

I turned the pencil over, and was about to erase, when I heard a little voice, so small that I could barely hear it, say, “Stop!” I looked around to see where the voice came from. I didn’t see anything, so I started to erase again. “Stop! Don’t erase!” This time it was a little louder and it scared me. I thought that it sounded like it was coming from my eraser, so I looked all over my eraser, and saw a little smiley face. It smiled at me, and suddenly an arm stuck out of the pencil and motioned for me to come closer! I was so surprised that I fell over and said, “WOW,” very loudly. The hand raised to the lips on the smiley face and motioned “sh.” I leaned closer, and it whispered, “Keep me a secret, and later, I will tell you about myself.” I quickly acted as though nothing had happened and kept doing my math. About a minute later, I remembered the problem that I had gotten wrong. I looked at the eraser, and it smiled at me.

I whispered, “How will I erase if I can’t use this eraser?” “You can use this one,” and the hand popped out of the pencil holding a regular eraser. I took it, whispered,
“Thanks,” and went on doing my math. I was very excited, and I had a lot of questions to ask the eraser.

*  *  *

“Time to go to bed,” my mother called. I usually did not want to bed, but tonight I was very excited because of the eraser. I tried not to act too excited, because then my mom would ask why I was in such a hurry to go to bed. Soon, all the goodnight hugs and kisses were over, (I usually would drag out hugs and kisses) and I shut the door. (I would always shut the door at night. Just so you don’t think that I did that because I was going to talk to my eraser!) I had smuggled the pencil into my bedroom when I put my pajamas on. I took the pencil out from under my pillow.

“Are you a person?” I asked the eraser. I felt so silly talking to a pencil!

“I do not know what I am. I guess the machines made me forget,” came the reply. “All I know is that I would like to get out of here. I suppose you wouldn’t like to tear apart your eraser though. I just might be here a while.”

“You are right that I would not want to rip my eraser, because what if my mother asked what happened to my eraser? What would I tell here? You said that you went through machines. What was it like? Do you know what you look like? I guess I could rip my eraser. I really want to get you out.” I kept talking and asking questions, giving the eraser no time to answer any of my questions.

“Please do rip your eraser!” the voice sounded very excited! “Didn’t I already tell you that I didn’t know what I looked like? Maybe I didn’t. I will tell you about the machines once I get out of here.” I had to decide if I was going to rip my eraser, which meant that I would have to tell my mother, or leave whatever was in my eraser in there. I really wanted to see what the thing looked like! I thought for a moment, and then I said, “I will rip the eraser, but how am I supposed to do it without hurting you?”

“I will shrink so I am so tiny that you won’t even be able to see me!” I had no idea how this strange, awesome, amazing thing was going to do it, but I said, “Okay.” I didn’t want eraser bits all over my bed, so I got out of bed and went over to the trash can to rip. Soon the job was done, and I saw a tiny figure that looked like a human being.

“You look like a human, but you can’t be one, because humans cannot shrink.”

“Oh well, I do not care how I look. Can I lie down on your pillow by you? If you are wondering, I can talk just as loud as you, and I can scream so loud, that once, I was about to be smashed so I screamed as loud as I could and the person the was going to smash me, became deaf. Never mind that. Let me tell you about the machines. They were so loud that I thought that my ears would blow up! No, loud couldn’t describe it. These machines were loud, roaring, deafening, earth shaking, window rattling, rapid, speedy, quick, dashing, rushing, and tearing along! Well, I didn’t enter this pencil till it was in the store, but I was at the pencil factory watching everything that happened. Here is how pencils are made. 
  First there cedar wood is cut into square blocks called pencil blocks. Then a machine cuts the blocks into slices called pencil slats. Then the pencil slats are then waxed and stained.”
 “Wow! It must have taken a while!” I said.
 “Well, the machines were very fast. They had to be because thousands of pencils are made each day! Did you know that more than 2 billion pencils are used in the United States every year! So they have to make a lot! On with the story. After they wax and stain the wood, a machine cuts groves in the slats. Writing cores, which are really lead are put in the grooves. Then they take another grooved slat and glue it onto the one with lead, and so it looks like a sandwich. Then another machine cuts the sandwiches into a whole bunch of pencil shapes and they are sanded smooth. Then each pencil is painted. As you can tell, this takes a lot of machines and a lot of blades! Then after they paint the pencil, the metal ring up by the eraser is put on, and then the eraser got put into place.” 

 “Wow! So where did you come along?” I asked.
 

“I came along when the were going to ship off the pencils. I decided to take a ride, so I jumped into that one that you bought, and then a man picked up a whole handful of pencils and wrapped us in plastic. It got super hot in there! Just when I thought I was going to die, someone else unwrapped us. But we aren’t to that part of the story. Along with a bunch of wrapped pencils we were thrown into boxes. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my own hand! After a very long ride, the box was lifted out of the truck, and I could see some light come in through the cracks of the box! Well, then we were all unwrapped and I could finally breathe! We were thrown into a plastic bin and I sat there waiting! Then you came along and bought me! That is all there is to tell!”
 

“What a story! I think that we will have lots of fun together!” I said.

 “Me too,” said the eraser.

Well, I hope that you enjoyed it!

Amy