the stash of secret pencils

On the Texas farm on which I lived as a child, there was an old and scary wasp-filled barn that I would sometimes venture into when I was feeling brave (which was often). My bravado was amply rewarded one day when I found a big box of pencils half- covered in sawdust and spiderwebs. The special thing about the pencils I found was that they had a really dark lead in them and I became obsessed with only using pencils that had a really dark lead in them and not the soft and vile lead that my other pencils had back at home. I kept my magical secret to myself and would sneak out to the barn and "steal" the good pencils whenever I needed them. I was always afraid of getting caught because it did not occur to me that they were only pencils and would not be missed by anyone, anyways. Years later, when I was in art school all the lemmings would dress the same and draw the figure in the same style using mechanical pencils to make extra sure to take all the life out of any human figure they tried to draw. I have never even held a mechanical pencil and would rather sell insurance than draw with a such an instrument. It was I alone who understood the true secret of art and that no art will flow from anything as dreadful as a mechanical pencil and that is why my art school comrades (whom I never spoke to anyways) are now happily working away making mechanical layouts for western union and insurance companies.