PENCIL COLLECTION

A rural county in north Florida was a legal client of our firm. Their clerk of court, which in a small Florida county is a big and well-paid position, was a small, somewhat fastidious man known as “Mr. Hubert.” For rural Florida, Mr. Hubert seemed somewhat an anachronism, a take only accentuated when he showed me his collection of fountain and ballpoint pens. I left thinking Florida couldn’t get much weirder, but it has.

             Fast forward thirty years, and I have . . . a pencil collection. It started when our kids were little and we visited lots of museums, and I would pick up a pencil from each, sometimes also those strange-shaped big erasers. I actually edit my manuscripts in pencil, so they do get used, and it’s sort of cool to remember the places we’ve been when I pick one up. But the collection has now far outstripped my ability to use them in my lifetime, and still they keep coming: the one with Mickey Mouse ears, the one from somewhere out west with rocks in its middle. My kids bring them to me. I have them from European hotels. It’s sort of interesting now that most museum shops no longer seem to carry them.

             So there you have it. I’ve confessed. I’m pretty normal otherwise, I swear. Mr. Hubert is probably nodding, somewhere out there.