A sparingly used writing tool. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
When was the last time, dear reader, you used a pencil? It is highly likely that a pencil is used only sparingly even if you are someone who writes a lot. Cruciverbalists, artists and avid book readers are some who use pencils, I think. Yet I’ve noticed pencils have something that draws attention, unlike pens, when flaunted in one’s hand or pocket, or on a desk. What is that quality a pencil one flaunts has and why does it draw attention? Some anecdotes might help clarify my assertion.
Some important TV/video presenters flaunt expensive pens which, I think, they rarely use. But why do some anchors/TV presenters (Colin Jost & Michael Che1 and sometimes Karan Thapar are examples) flaunt a pencil—pencil—when they’re hardly seen using it? Do they use it outside the interview time? If it is symbolic, what is the symbolism all about? (I don’t think they use it at all because the pencils they display are always full length, never been used. Clearly they are for flaunting.) Daniel Kahnemann’s book Thinking, fast and slow has a picture half-used, bite-marked pencil on its cover that (apparently) has been used to draw the scrawl featured along with it. Would a pen on the cover have the same effect? Does flaunting a humble pencil make a difference that flaunting a pen, even an expensive one, cannot?
The first time the humble pencil got my attention back in 1970s was when my sister insisted on using a particular type of pencil for shorthand writing practice: Koh-i-Noor pencils. These were yellow and were expensive and imported. During school most of my classmates used Nataraj pencils but wealthy classmates flashed their Staedtler/Faber-Castell pencils. This caused some heart-burn; those pencils wrote smoother and were coveted because they also served as status symbols. They also came with erasers which our pencils did not have. Since the mid-90s these imported pencils have become common.
Pencils brought their own companions: pencil sharpeners, ‘perfumed’ erasers, and finally pencil boxes and pencil cases. These boxes attracted something totally unassociated with schoolwork: stickers. How thrifty some of us were with our pocket money to buy stickers that decorated our pencil boxes!
What’s the biggest mistake ever made with a pencil? This was a question host Stephen Fry posed on BBC’s QI show many years back. The biggest mistake, he said, was printing the message ‘DO NOT USE DRUGS’ on pencils. No credit for guessing what the pencil would read as it was shaved.
Why does the BiC Cristal ball pen remain the most popular ball-pen of all time? I believe its popularity has a lot to do with the fact that it has the shape of a pencil and, like a pencil, no moving parts at all unlike ball pens of different design.
Pencils (like many other implements) are exploited for other purposes. Just as some wands/batons serve as symbols of authority, particularly in defense and police services, pencils can be, and are, used to make a statement. Which brings us to our question: What is that a pencil has that one finds alluring when it is flaunted, which is why it is flaunted in the first place? I think the answer is rarity: a pencil in an adult’s hand attracts more attention than a pen, even a luxury pen, because pencils are rarely used by adults, and therefore for the observer the person using it must have a unique or peculiar reason for doing so. Therefore an adult flaunting this humble writing implement creates a certain mystique, even if fleeting. I believe this is why some public figures flaunt pencils even when they have no intention of using them at all.
A humble eye-patch in a 1950s Ogilvy & Mather made the ad famous and sold the product vigorously. A pencil flaunted can do what that eye-patch did. So, go ahead and flaunt that lowly pencil and croon…
Behold the lowly pencil!
In student stationery, it is the footsill.
Erasers, pens, paints in different colours
Easels, papers, and all sorts of rulers…
But without the lowly one, they’re all quite…nill.
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