Erasers

What the hell is that" I yelled.  My son was trying to remove some writing from a paper but it looked like a big black grease mark.  I dove at him before he tore the paper.  His eraser looked new but must have been made of waxed paper. That reminds me, I used to take Bobby's pencils and stick the eraser in my ear and get ear wax all over it.  I would wipe it off and when Bobby tried to erase something, the wax would smear the paper.  This was almost the same thing.  My son's eraser was a piece of junk.  It even crumbled when I tried to clean it.  I then tried the old bite the brass thing holding the eraser to the pencil and bulge out a bit of stuff so it could erase.  Nope!, the pencil was not having any of it.  I ended up tearing the paper and hurting my teeth.

I know there are good erasers out there.  Only on the cheap (I assume imported) pencils are the squibs inferior.  Erasers have a simple and finite job, remove a carbon based dust from paper without tearing the sheet.  Sounds simple.   I think tearing the paper is worse than not erasing completely.  My daughter was an erasing maniac.  Her letters and lines had to be perfect.  With her antics, a  pencil eraser lasted two days at the most.  I bought one of those giant rubber ones that can actually clean dishes and look exactly like a bar of soap.  They never wear out and they must taste good because I think the dog ate.  It could erase even the craziest chicken scratch. 

I hope with the decline of writing in the modern world that erasers do not disappear.  The bite marks on the brass ring was a proud moment in every child's day when that little bit of eraser bulged out.   He extended the life of a pencil eraser and finish his math test without worry of losing points for being messy.  You had to do it without getting any spit on the eraser or it would not scrub well.  Here is an invention.  An eraser for the television, if something is not proper, erase it.  I think Congress needs an eraser the size of the Washington Monument.  It even looks like a giant eraser.  The erasers on pens were longer lasting material.  It would erase pencil as well.  There have been some cool developments for erasers.  The ones that looked like Gumby are cool.  There are drafting erasers (talk about a lost art) that crumble easily but remove the marks from velum astonishingly well.  Those kinds sometime come with a brush attached so you do not blow spit all over the paper. 

This article is about writing erasers, not chalk board erasers.  Huck Shirley, my high school English teacher used to throw the chalk erasers at the non-conforming students.  He never hit me, I was too quick.  He missed four times.   The last attempt, he tried to get me about a week before school was out (I was a senior) and he had me dead.  I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye.  I only had time to cringe in anticipation.  One of the cute Torgenson girls in the seat in front of me lifted her head up off the desk just as the eraser neared and it smacked her in the face.  I was safe, the teacher was embarrassed mostly because he "never" hit an unintended victim but also because Diane was crying.  She was oh so cute.  I never even talked to her, the eraser thing was a perfect ice breaker.