Hi, my name is DCBman, and I’m a pen, pencil and notebook…aholic. I am powerless over pens, pencils and notebooks and my life has become unmanageable.

“Gawd, grant me the serenity to accept the pens, pencils and notebooks I already have,
The courage to change the future purchases I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.”

So I’m in the grocery store (granted, it was a nice one); I’m supposed to be getting butter and TP. As I walk down the aisle toward the dairy section I realize I’m in the school supply section (must…close…eyes…and…not…look). Made it almost all the way down the aisle without knocking anything over. I was literally 4 feet from the butter when I saw them.

The black lacquer caught my eye. Surely the store buyer must have goofed up because these were no ordinary grade school supplies, and obviously they were priced incorrectly. But there they sat in all their glory…a beautifully packaged 12 pack of Dixon Ticonderoga Blacks in HB. Unable to resist the magnetic pull, I drew closer and saw the price was only a single dollar. This strange Twilight Zone music started playing as I reached out, against my better judgement. I could hear my wife’s phantom voice screaming...”you already have 472,594 pencils, Bob!! You have palominos, you have berols and faber castells, you have staedlers, prospectors and golden bears, you have blackwings, generals and kitaboshi’s, you have nitrams and derwents, you have old pencils, new pencils…you have every freaking wooden pencil ever imagined let alone created on this entire planet!! WHY DO YOU NEED THOSE???”

Sigh…because I just can’t help myself, that’s why! Heck, they’re only a buck (I told myself), and in the cart they went…all (14) 12-packs they had left on the shelf! Probably won’t see them again for that price any time soon (I told myself).

And so here I sit, slowly sharpening a pencil, smelling the cedar and then sketching some cartoonish sketch along with some notations in one of my journals.

Oh well…Life is good! 

…now off to the knife section!