I was about to undergo a new project where tons of measurements had to be taken and suddenly I realized that there wasn’t a pencil in the house. After scouring around, I found two pencil remnants, very short and only one had any eraser left. So I did something I haven’t done since my kids were in elementary school, I went shopping for pencils. I didn’t even know how much a pencil would cost these days. Turns out they’re not giving them away. I picked up a package of 100 pencils! I thought to myself, I’ll die from old age before I can get through even 10 of these! I put that package back down where I found it and kept searching, looking around thinking, “can’t I just buy 5 or 6 pencils”? And why do I need a Number 2 pencil? How about a different number? Like what’s wrong with a number 1 pencil? Wouldn’t I want the best I thought?” They didn’t have any number 1 pencils, nor did they have any number 3 or 4 pencils so I quickly dismissed that idea. I found a box of 12 pencils with erasers and I thought now that sounds like a good number. Plus these pencils had already been demoted to number 2 grade so I didn’t have to worry about it, plus the package label read, “Ticonderoga, the World’s Best Pencil!”, which gave me confidence. Being number 2’s I thought, so these are the second best pencils in the world? Remember that show “Bonanza”? Where Hoss and those other people lived on The Ponderosa? It kind of reminded me of that show, like I bet they used number 2 Ticonderoga pencils to figure stuff out around the ranch even though these pencils will never be a “number 1”, I was still fine with it.

Curious, I looked up the difference on the internet [and I believe everything I read over the internet – don’t you?]. 🙂 I found a reference where number 1 pencil leads are [considered] too soft and using them for writing tends to smear easily. Going on it said that number 3 and 4 pencil leads are much harder than the number 2 and their markings are, therefore, too light to read easily. Turns out that school teachers still require their students to use number 2 pencils. There must be a reason for that, maybe so they can try to figure out what the heck the answers were on that test you turned in? Note the fact that this is one of those few cases [in life] where it pays to come in second. Being a number 2 pencil appears to have its advantage(s)…