The Daily Grinder

by monty

I’m one of the most easily bored people I’ve ever met.  I have the attention span of a walnut and my interest level in any said activity wanes faster than an addict’s bankroll on buy one get one free crack ball day.  Does crack come in balls?  I don’t know.  I actually have no first hand knowledge of crack.  That’d be an easy explanation as to why my brain runs off the rails so often, but I just think my rails are different from everyone else’s.  Or perhaps they’re the same and I’ve just switched down a different track from the pack.  I suddenly want to go buy a model train set.  Woo-woo-buckaroo!  A cowboy themed train set apparently.  This opening paragraph is a great example of my lack of mental cohesion.

Anyway, listen.  So I was watching one of the greatest cinematic epic tales ever to be recorded in the annals (2 n’s ok, 1 n-gross) of history.  Of course I mean Kindergarten Cop.  Arnold’s finest work opposite some rug monsters that yielded such wonderful gems as “It’s not a tumor”, “How are you?”, “Yeah”, “Stop it!”, and “Who is your daddy and what does he do?”.  Through tears of giggliness, I noticed in one of the classroom scenes (I believe it was the one during the firedrill when the kid is happily dancing on the table yelling “I’m on fire! I’m on fire!”) that there was one of those old turny-crank handle versions of a pencil sharpener nailed to the wall by the door.  Boy did that bring back memories of wasting time as a very small Monty.

Do they even use those anymore?  The last time I remember being exposed to one of those things was in the 8th grade… and that was about 24 years ago.  If they’ve been replaced by frickin’ lasers or micro shave bots, that’s a real loss to the time wasting kid of today.  Maybe that’s why gang violence is on the rise… no more access to a turny-crank pencil sharpener, fine… got my gat and I’m going to bust a cap in the whitie.  I spent time on the streets.

When I was small and bored, I’d intentionally break off the point of my pencil so as to have an excuse to go over to the door and use the sharpener.  I’d break my pencil roughly every 20 minutes.  I wrote hard, man.  So, firstly… the pencil sharpener was by the door… so I could look out into the hallway and see if there was anyone on their way to lunch or the nurse or anywhere.  Sometimes across the hall there’d be a person doing the same thing and we’d nod to each other… knowing we were stealing time from the man.  About that time, “the man” would shout in my direction to hurry up.  The first thing you had to do on those old cranky-turny things was adjust the size ring.  It was a metal disk with a dozen holes punched in it to correspond to the various pencil sizes in use.  I say “in use” loosely.  I only ever saw one size being used… that being pencil sized, but apparently this thing could take anything from a tooth pick to a telephone poll.  Once I tried it on the largest size to see if I could sharpen 2 or 3 at a time.  I did.  Sorta.  Once I’d spun the little disk around 8 or 23 times, I was again yelled at to hurry up and I’d quickly shove the pencil in and started cranking.  Grrrresh, grr-rrr-rrr-esh.  That’s the sharpening noise.

Oh dear!  The shavings container is full.  Better empty it.  This was great because now I got to make noise and potentially disrupt the class.  You couldn’t just dump the thing out, you had to bang it on the side of the trashcan.  Hard.  For about an hour.  Again, the teacher would bring an end to my fun.  So now I was usually given an ultimatum, either sharpen my pencil or sit down.  So I would.  Slowly.  Grrr.  Grrr. Grrr.  Grrr. Grrr.

“Monty!”

“What?” Grrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr.

Grrr. Grrr. Grrr. Grrr.

Heh, heh, heh.

Sometimes when I was really dreading sitting in my seat quietly I’d take off the shaving holder/safety device to watch the little spinning blade devices do the shaving.  I thought it to be a very clever engine of destruction.  I often pondered making one large enough to sharpen cars.

By now my 12 inch pencil was about 3 inches long.  I’d have to sit down because it was too short to use in the sharpener.  Although I did try once… but it just spun around providing no entertainment whatsoever.

After 70 or 80 times of doing this the teacher caught on and would require me to have 4 or 5 sharpened pencils ready.  Really? Crink, Crink, Crink, Crink, Crink.  “Teacher, I need to sharpen 5 pencils!”

Who did they think they were dealing with?

Then they’d try to get another kid in on it.  You know that narc kid every class had.

“Teach, I need to sharpen my battery of pencils.”

“Holly Helpful will you please give him a pencil to use?”

“Say whaa?”

*snap*

“It broke.”

“Holly Helpful will you please sharpen his pencils for him?”

Holly Helpful would give me a look like she felt that by working for the warden it would advance her station in life and would make her the envy of everyone.  In reality, it was 3rd grade and whatever smiles gleaned from the teacher, the snitch’s fate was always to get a skull fracture due to excessive blunt force trauma in dodge ball or to have an “accident” on the monkey bars.

Plotting a snitch’s demise was another good time waster… but that’s for another post.  In the meantime,  what were some of your greatest time wasting tactics in the early years of public education?

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