• Richard


• Lisa


• Tom


• Lizzie


• Serendipidy


• Norval Joe


• Planet Z

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LISA

School Days

Our school uniform included coat and bag; so, to express our individuality we changed our pencil cases yearly. In a small town invariably half the class had the same pencil case. Handmade didn’t have the cachet it has now. It was a guarantee of being bullied for the rest of your school days.

I spent summer up north with an old aunt where things were the same as home but they had different stationery shops… I was seen as a cosmopolitan fashion guru. I was picked first for teams. Never ate lunch alone. And all because of my pencil case.

RICHARD

Just in case

Some people carry a rabbit’s foot, others have their plushie mascots, but I had a lucky pencil case.

Far more practical than the totems other students would sit on their desks to bring them luck at exams, my case completely fulfilled all its usual functions. A receptacle for writing materials, erasers, pencil sharpeners and many useful odds and ends as well as chewing gum, and cleaning wipes for my glasses.

You see, I had to wear special glasses…

Special glasses that shifted the colours of the intricate graffiti designs on my pencil case, to reveal my carefully hidden cheat notes.

TOM

Pencil Case

My first wife had rather large breasts. She showed me a trick that seems to me outside my general knowledge base. It a test of gravitational forces and a pencil case. If you are of an age when school supplies were actually a cool thing to have each year there are to major groups of pencil storage. The rectangle molded plastic case with a sliding 12-inch rule, which had a pencil sharpener fused on top. The other a pouch with a zipper, uncool. If you wedge pencil case #2 under a breast and it didn’t hit the ground you won.

LIZZIE

She looked at the pencil case. What’s in there, a nosy colleague asked. Nothing. She grabbed the pencil case. Pencils, obviously, someone said. She nodded, that too. Let them think that. Why are you carrying around a pencil case, that’s for kids. Yes, for kids, she nodded. I’ll give you 100 bucks if you let me look inside. She shook her head. Not in a million years would she allow that to happen and money meant nothing to her. Besides, how would she explain the ears and teeth she had collected from the guys she had buried in the marsh?

SERENDIPIDY

I kept a flick knife in my pencil case.

Knuckle-dusters in my lunch box.

Throwing stars in my school bag.

In case of emergencies, I would slip razor blades inside the covers of my text books and a can of pepper spray in my pocket.

You could never take too many precautions in my school.

It was a tough environment where only the strong survived.

Even the teachers knew to watch their backs.

You had to fight to survive, every day, every lesson.

Bullying was totally out of control, and as for the bullies themselves…

I was the best!

NORVAL JOE

Bobbi squeezed her eyes shut. “I will always hate the things you did to me. But someday, we will be all each other has.”

Billbert looked down to give the siblings some privacy and kicked through the trash thrown around by the tornado. His mother and Mandi tugged at Sabrina’s bonds.

Among the varied trash Billbert found a pencil case and picked it up. It rattled when he shook it.

Inside he found a heart shaped locket. Inside it was a black and white picture of a little girl and a large oval emerald.

“That was my grandmother’s,” Sabrina gasped.

PLANET Z

Paul’s family never put a tree in their house to decorate for Christmas. Instead, they’d put a tree in their big backyard every year and they’ve been there a long time for generations and seeing the big trees and the little ones together and Paul saying that one was for my uncle and that one was my grandmother‘s and that was my dad‘s when he was a boy and I look on Google Maps and see the small woods on the screen. And then the map refreshes and it’s all gone they sold to developers to build a housing subdivision.