An Unfortunate Mastication

I was paying attention--I really was! But when Dr. Dawson was going on about Transcendentalism, something the professor's background caught my eye. A pencil on the floor.

I'm sure it had dropped from a table and bounced into the corner where it laid still, unbeknown to its careless owner. The lonely pencil jolted a memory of the day before, while I was giving a campus tour to a group of perspective students. Thirty feet from the Performing Arts Center, I came upon a similarly lonely pencil in the road. Being an eyesore, I picked it up and slipped it into my glove, despite the fact that I had no idea where the pencil had been, or what it could have touched. I am not a fool; I do know it is not typically a good idea to pick things up off the disgusting asphalt to collect as keep sakes, but I wasn't really thinking about that as I delivered my spiel about the theatre to my perspectives. This tiny detail of my tour clung to my memory by a vague shred. Hours later, I was surprised to find the pencil in my glove, and I automatically shoved it into my purse.

Huh. I wondered dreamily where that pencil was, as Dr. Dawson's voice danced about the classroom. I giggled quietly and then stopped short. I pulled the pencil out of my mouth--I had been chewing on its eraser. Seeing the scrape marks and bits of dirt gouged into it's plastic, I found myself spitting in the middle of my lecture course.