My Funny Valentine: In Praise of the Pencil

My Funny Valentine: In Praise of the Pencil

There is just something sexy about a pencil.

Just hear me out on this one. When it comes to sex appeal, the pencil beats every other office supply, hands down.

Think about it for a second.

There’s the pencil skirt, the ubiquitous wardrobe staple that puts a little wiggle in the walk of every gal who dons it. There’s the pencil in the hair, that neat old trick that telegraphs brains, beauty, and perhaps a little something more under a buttoned-up facade. Combine a pencil skirt with a pencil in the hair, and don’t be surprised if the room temperature rises significantly.

Try getting the same effect with a tablet or smart phone. Trust me, there’s no app for that.

To be fair, men have tried to corner their share of pencil-appeal, but their most significant contribution to the pencil-appeal pantheon relies a great deal on execution. Pencil mustache on Clark Gable equals swoon-worthy. Pencil mustache on anyone else… not so much. Though bless John Waters for giving it the old college try all these years.

I’m clearly not the only one who finds that the pencil is imbued with a certain air of romance. It’s been said that E.B. White, author of classics like “Charlotte’s Web” and “Stuart Little” considered it the highest compliment to tell his wife, Katherine, that she smelled like pencil shavings.

Vladimir Nabokov even memorialized the Blackwing pencil as a lover’s tool in his novella, “Look! The Harlequins!” when he wrote, “I caressed the facets of the Blackwing pencil you kept  gently  twirling…My eyes moved with  yours, my pencil queried with your own  faint little cross in the  narrow margin, a solecism I could not  distinguish  through  the tears of space.  Happy tears,  radiant, shamelessly happy tears!”

There’s a more modern approach too, with Tom Hanks famously wooing Meg Ryan via email  in the 1999 film “You’ve Got Mail” with the line, “I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.”

So do pencils.

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and lovers across the country are scrambling for the last-minute run on chocolates, flowers and other romantic gifts. I say go with a gift of the pencil persuasion instead. A pencil-inspired wardrobe item, a piece of literature or poetry, or even a single pencil tucked into a traditional flower bouquet can spark more than just a conversation. Come Wednesday morning, you won’t ­look at your office supplies the same way again.

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