[Words in the Margins, Vol. 1] Pencils from My Childhood

It was just like any other afternoon at my desk, except on this particular day, I was cleaning out my pencil cup to make room for a few new Blackwings that were sent over by a kind friend. I looked at my messy pencil cup that probably hadn’t been dusted in forever and thought, “why not? Let’s take everything out and wipe it down for once.”

And good thing I did, because I ended up finding these two Tombow pencils that I haven’t seen in quite some time. They were at the very bottom of the cup where I couldn’t see them from my line of sight, so I only discovered them after removing almost all of the other pencils from the cup. They’re from my childhood, more than 20 years ago. (Does that mean I can call them “vintage”?)

I used these 4B Tombow Mono pencils for a drawing class I took as a kid, where I learned the basics of sketching and shading. Where those skills evaporated to now, I can’t really tell you, but I remember enjoying the learning process and watching still life objects form on the page as I followed the instructor’s guiding words.

My mom must have thought I would lose these pencils for sure - she had written my full Korean name on a small label sticker and placed the sticker around the end of the pencil body (where the 4B text is). The labels were so old and falling apart that I had to scrape them off with my fingernails so that they wouldn’t leave residue wherever I placed the pencils. Still, it was nice to see her handwriting again. We mostly text and call these days, making use of modern technology, but I always admired her neat handwriting. She would take time to press each word onto paper and tell me how important it was to be intentional with each stroke.

I should also mention why the discovery of these pencils meant a lot to me that day - I have very few things left from my childhood in Korea, having moved to the U.S. with my parents when I was eleven years old. Even after our international move, we bounced around the state of California multiple times for various reasons without a permanent address, which meant we had little room for sentimentality. At least, I didn’t.

I had no regrets throwing away notebooks I had filled in school and art projects I had completed. To me, they had already served their purpose and I couldn’t imagine myself looking at them again seriously. My mom, on the other hand, lamented almost every item I gave her to discard. “Do you remember how your teacher wanted to keep this project for their classroom?” she would say, holding up one of my middle school art projects about archaeology. I eventually gave in and agreed to keep a few things, which now all fit into a small number of boxes that I keep in the bedroom closet.

It’s funny to think about it now, when I have turned into the journaling fiend that I am, saving every ticket, sticker and piece of ephemera I can get my hands on for my notebook. I don’t know when the shift occurred, but as I notice these new tendencies about myself - not being able to throw away old postcards and letters, still keeping old birthday cards from my parents in one section of my bookcase - I’m starting to see where my mom was coming from. I can’t really describe it well in a single word, but somehow I feel more than just sentimentality. Maybe it’s also why my dad keeps some of his old college textbooks to this day.

Reading those old letters brings me back to a very specific point in time, in the exact way that these pencils helped me remember the small room where I learned how to draw. I sat on a stool in front of an easel each week and sketched, noticing how soft the 4B pencil lead felt and how it would glide across the paper, leaving dark gray streaks.

As I’m trying to draw more in my everyday life, it almost felt like a sign to find the old pencils again. Not wanting to misplace them, I put on some new pencil caps and placed them to the side of my desk in plain view. I hope to breathe new life into them sooner rather than later. After all, I’m sure they’re itching to stretch their legs and run across paper again.

The pencils mentioned in this post are the Tombow Mono in 4B.

Words in the Margins is a series of everyday musings with a focus on the analogue way of life. Although the posts will vary in length, the content aims to rediscover the joys of stationery / stationery-adjacent products and practices. Like the words scribbled on the margins of a page, the thoughts shared around a topic will ebb and flow.