First Grade Reasoning

Do you remember, when you were a kid, in first grade or whatever, making a pencil holder out of popsicle sticks for your mother? It could have been for Mother’s Day, or for her birthday, or for just some random Thursday because your teacher ran out of the “cool” projects to do, and it was her standby. And when you brought it home your mother’s face lit up. She was going to use that thing like it was no tomorrow. Before the night was out she had her motley collection of pens, pencils, and one magic marker hanging out in the amazing pencil holder.

And remember how you pasted a mini-calendar on the front of it for some odd reason, or maybe it was a picture of you, or a drawing you did, or you just colored the sticks with your favorite color crayon (which was blue)? Now really think hard for this next one. Do you have any idea where that pencil holder is now? Does your mother even know? It has joined the collection of stuff you created at school that was cool for a couple of weeks and then disappeared.

Yeah, she threw it out, but it wasn’t a callous thing. Not at all. You see, the construction paper you used to create the bottom of the pencil holder wasn’t strong enough to withstand more than one writing implement at a time to stand in the holder, so it gave way after only a few days. She could have created another bottom for it, but you didn’t want her to have to do work when it was a gift, right? So she chucked it. And you never knew.

Because, guess what? You had forgotten all about it, and had moved on to the papier mache frog, or to the Lima bean seed you were growing, or even to the paper tie you were making your dad for Father’s Day. That’s how our minds go when we’re kids, and how some of our minds still go even now. It’s all about the next thing, the future. But then we grow up, and for most of us we think back on the “good ol days,” that weren’t all that good, to be honest, at the time.

So, that popsicle pencil holder that was everything the day you brought it home, them faded out of your memory, now makes its way back with a vengeance. You go back home and ask your mom about it, then she feels bad when she has to admit 30 years later that she threw it out.

But it was never really about that popsicle pencil holder anyway, was it? And now I’m waiting for my children to bring some variation of it home, and vowing not to throw it out, so 30 years from now I can hold my head up high when they ask about it.

Sam