when i was seven, the thing i wanted most in the entire world was this snoopy pencil box that was for sale at the yellow front store around the corner from our house. im not sure why i wanted a pencil case, i wasnt the most organized or particularly tidy second grader, but i loved the peanuts and snoopy especially. so for my birthday my mom bought me the pencil case. i remember taking the pencils and erasers out and setting them neatly on the table. the pencils were wood painted with the kind of scenes on them that when you turn the pencil clock or counter-clockwise, a series of events takes place. first, snoopy climbs aboard his dog house airplane. next he is seen donning his cap and goggles. now he is dodging woodstock. finally, his dog house air plane comes to rest on the ground again, and he is lying upside down looking up at the sky. for the entire weekend before school began i took the pencils out every day just to look at them, i smelled them, put the erasers in my teeth to feel the satisfying softness of them. i swore that i was going to take care of the pencils and other things inside, planned to use them sparingly, to appreciate them and try to never sharpen the pencils past the point of where the pictures ended.school started a couple weeks after my birthday, and i brought the case with me. i opted to use the pencils only for special occasions, and tried very hard to use other writing options. i left the case in my desk so as to not lose it or get it stolen on the bus rides to and from school. my diligence lasted for about four or five weeks. but not long after i started to forget about how fucking special the case and its contents were. i became complacent about it like children do about most things. i had a habit of chewing on my pencils, leaving teeth marks in them and biting the erasers off the end. i loaned one or two to the girl next to me whose arm smelled like cookies ( i have a very distinct memory of this becasue we played a game once in which you had to touch a body part of yours to the body part of your partner. it was not sexual or creepy like you might think. anyway, i remember the teacher saying nose to arm. and the girls arm smelled so sweet and i felt embarassed about leaving my nose there longer than i should have)soon, the pencils were gone, and the erasers chewed or rubbed down to nothing little stumps. i took the case home and hid it under my bunk bed, i felt so ashamed of myself. this is my very first memory of feeling grief and disappointment to the point that you want to smash something. i feel that way right now. i know that once you sharpen the pencil past the point of use, or you unconsciously begin to gnaw away at it, its going to be gone and you cant bring it back. there is nothing i can do now, but go back to the boring, ugly yellow number two pencils.

i never wanted to be with kristine. she was a yellow number two to me. A was a Snoopy pencil case filled with all of my favorites. I went back to using yellow number twos because I have always felt like I never deserved the good stuff and so when I had it in my life, I subconsciously wrecked it. I know this makes sense to me, and maybe not to many other people. tara understands. she knows that because of the way we were brought up that whenever we have had good things in our lives we have sabotaged them because we're afraid of having successes and love and things because we never learned to have those things. Im tired. Im not making sense. Just know.