Untitled Document

NODE (A NEGATIVE "ODE") TO A BOSTON
PENCIL SHARPENER

by JOHN FENN

From the time I first entered a school room (don't ask; figure the Paleolithic Era) to the present, every classroom in these United States has had a Boston Pencil Sharpener uneasily riveted to a door molding or wall.

Every one of those machines share the following characteristics.

They all have a metal wheel which makes them capable of sharpening everything from a howitzer shell to a Q-tip.
The adjustment wheels are invariably set, and jammed, for whatever writing instrument you don't have.
They are full to overflowing with wood and graphite ... which you will get on your hands, no matter how carefully you try to empty the thing

and, most important;

they do not work.

That is to say, they sharpen the pencil so that 85% of the graphite is wood covered, the shavings holder will fall off, or they mangle entirely any writing instrument inserted.

Why, in the face of this abominable performance record, have they remained for at least a half century?

At some period in anti-diluvian history, two commandments were handed down on a Granite Tablet:

CLASSROOMS SHALT HAVE BOSTON SHARPENERS

THEY SHALT NOT WORK.

Fine. No big deal, these are simple realities - generally acknowledged, Divinely Determined Absolute Truths.

Yet, here we are in the last throws of the Twentieth Century, where every appliance imaginable, every computer program purchasable, comes out with a new, improved "better-mouse-trap" model every year.

We can construct devices which launch automatically controlled vehicles that land on planets out of metals that can withstand heats, blasts and stresses of incalculable intensity. We can seal off submarines to withstand pressures of mile deep waters. And still, the Boston Company can't keep those damn things from spilling, or keep the silly little rotors sharpening pencils!

What happened? Why, in academic institutions, is there a suspension of the Darwinian law of Survival of the Fittest?

Simple. Administrators, Teachers, Superintendents, Building and Maintenance Staff in Educational institutions KNOW that, in the beginning, the Lord determined that the Boston Sharpener would reign supreme.

Phone rings in the Principal's office

"Hello, is this Dr. Sturdley?"

"Yes."

"My name is Trent Heffelfinger from Bermiji, Minnesota. We are manufacturing the Bermiji Pencil Sharpener which is unconditionally guaranteed for thirty years ..."

"I'm sorry, Trent, but we couldn't think of buying your product. The Granite Tablet says ..."

Change is not a part of the Academic environment, you see.

HOWEVER, in certain wildly progressive rooms a rebellious left wing teacher is occasionally able to slip an electric pencil sharpener in the room ... concealed between some books on the cluttered desk. Fact is, they may become the new norm for the Twenty First Century ... because they don't work either.