The Great Question

Sometimes there are those subjects that are so obvious that I can't believe they remain unaddressed. I search hard, and still doubt myself when I can't turn up any previously written post on the matter. I ultimately have to trust that it's something new and to be grateful. There happens to be a question that had popped up in my mind as a means of separating people into two camps. It was one of those things like dogs and cats or coffee and tea.

The thing that I thought of was whether someone would favor pens or pencils to write with. As a young student, you would have pencils before pens, but perhaps after crayons. Heading into adulthood, some perhaps cast off the pencils to assert themselves, but I still like pencils. I wonder if it might be owing to my father, who is very handy and who I'm sure wouldn't think of using a pen for a carpentry project. I don't do that, but we often do what our parents did out of habit.

I often second-guess myself, which probably is a natural thing for someone who uses a pencil (although most type more than they use either one). Someone with a pen is likely to be very sure of themselves by comparison. Maybe I should aspire to be a pen person. I have used pens, sometimes more than pencils, but such a thing does not make me a pen person as much as a person who uses pens. There is certainly a distinction.

Of course, there are erasable pens. That's really the inexcusable choice. They don't erase easily, and yet they aren't indelible when left alone. They are really unsatisfactory in place of either pen or pencil. It's the one thing that pencil people and pen people can agree on, that mutual dislike of and distrust for the people who would be friends with all by appearing to be both at once. We know better. Everybody had better just pick a side.