Pencils

This afternoon I was cutting some western cedar wood to make Lincoln Logs.  The smell of cedar sawdust brought my mind back to sharpening pencils in elementary school.  Today pencils are made with some form of composite pressed and formed wood pieces, but back in the day, pencils were made with real western cedar wood.  That smell reminded me of shaking out the pencil sharpener, along with dusting the chalkboard erasers.  Pencils were reserved for math and pens were for writing.  Thank you, Miss Tigner for showing me how to add and subtract in the first grade at Old Post Elementary school in 1956, and thank you, Miss Merryman for teaching me the times tables in the third grade.  Thank you, Miss Buis for explaining long division in the fifth grade, and thank you, Miss Barrett for patiently teaching me to balance equations in the seventh grade.  Thank you, Mr. Webb for motivating me to learn geometry as a junior and, finally, thank you, Miss Janes for staying with me through trigonometry as a senior at Edgewood High school.  I am sure that all of the above-mentioned teachers wondered what would ever become of Gerald.  Well, he made it … sort of.  And he taught others as well.  And many of those, my students, are teaching now.  Solomon enigmatically said in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”  Solomon, you are spot on!  There have been teachers, there are teachers, and there will be teachers.  And for all of you teachers, I give to you today a heartfelt, “Thank You!”