this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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I don't think the pencils would be alone in that view. Erasers, markers, glue, staplers (though they can be refilled) would all come back with some small part of them having been depleted. Individual paperclips may never return, but they're so numerous maybe they have like a hivemind.
I think the greatest honor would be the sheet of paper that gets transformed into a paper football. You have transcended your original purpose and form, chosen of the giant hands not for their labor, but for their leisure.
Do the paper planes look down on the footballs?
In the physical sense, absolutely. But if they're honest with themselves, their new form is much more fragile and fleeting, and will almost certainly end with them in a bin soon enough, whereas the football may at least have a chance to rejoin the desk and tell the others of its deeds.
I should not be awake this early contemplating the potential existential crises of paper airplanes.
Fortune tellers look down on both.
I wanted to talk about rubbers but couldn't remember the less ambiguous term for it. I mean, a third grader probably wouldn't have the other meaning in their desk (and I should hope it doesn't come back used), but I'm also not sure everyone would recognise this meaning.
I assume a small part being depleted in their mission is acceptable. Pencils get shorn off with violence though. That's gonna be more traumatic. Or maybe they're just the ones defying the mainstream dogma?
Ooh, me me
Back in my day we all call it rubber. I guess as western culture seeped its way eventually especially with more internet access in my country, as well as proper education, kids nowadays may call it eraser now. Idk I don't talk to kids
Me personally I know the other rubber meaning well after I am legal aged and mentally (debatable)
I think rubber used to be the British term? I learned it like that, and I think our primary school English material was all rather UK oriented. The internet has ruined me, however, and now my English is a scuffed mess.
My country was a British colony before, so that makes sense.
NZ here resonating with that theory.
Eraser is extremely American to my mind (and the early memories I have)
Individual staples anticipate a future of sudden mutilation by a chomping death machine and having their corpses ornament a book report.