Eraser

Have you ever used an entire eraser? I mean an ENTIRE eraser, right down the tiniest nub that’s impossible to hold between your fingers. I know I haven’t. Not for lack of making mistakes. I’ve condemned many an eraser to a premature death though.

I can only begin to list all the unspeakable atrocities I’ve committed against those small sections of rubber or vinyl. I used to stab them with mechanical pencils, breaking the lead off inside them and then practice “surgery” to remove the slivers. Weeks later I’d be furiously labouring over a question for school and trying to remove a mistake I’d made, and then find myself utterly bewildered when the eraser removed my answer, but replaced it with a large, scratchy scribble, due no doubt to a long-forgotten pencil lead still embedded in the rubber. Such a neglectful surgeon I was. And then the question would be forgotten for the next ten minutes as I tried again to extract the ancient shrapnel from the wound under the glaring light of my lamp, on the operating table that was my desk…

I’d cut them up into makeshift stamps. Stick thumb tacks in them and turn them into tiny pigs. Carve them up and turn them into little pretend cameras with a small pencil eraser on top for the button. Draw on them with pen. Draw on them with pencil. Chew on them. Try and melt them (a venture I would certainly not recommend, the smell is just awful). Use them as pincushions. Stab them with jackknives just for the hell of it. Throw them at my sister’s head. Poor, longsuffering member of the desk drawer.

Such a noble little object when one thinks of it. Think of all the errors in calculation, the imperfect lines in sketches, the misunderstandings in language, the rashly written notes that all would have remained etched permanent if not for this small marvel. Just a humble little rectangle of rubber, and yet it holds within it all the promise of second chances.