Pencils

Katie was an artist. Everything she did was beautiful; she could draw people so real that you would expect them to speak, she could write in a way that painted vivid pictures in your mind and she even decorated her sandwiches with creative designs using mustard and mayonnaise. Katie was a good student in school, but by the last month of classes, her mind and her heart were not in her homework... she was thinking about art camp.

For the past three years Katie had dreamed of and waited for the day that she would finally be old enough to go to camp all by herself. Katie’s sister had gone to camp for soccer, her older brother went to a camp that taught you how to canoe and rock-climb and both of them would talk about nothing except camp for the rest of the summer. But this summer wasn’t about her siblings or their memories... this summer was about making her own memories at a camp of her own.

Katie has been looking through art camp brochures for months. Finally after a lot of thinking, Katie had made her decision: The Paintbrush Ranch. Granted, it was in the middle of nowhere, but it had the best of the best instructors. The only scary thing about it was that the program she wanted to go into was three weeks long and started the day after school was out for the summer. It was a long time to be away from home and the camp started so soon... she had only six more days until she was no longer in the fifth grade. One more week ’til camp!

Katie started packing her bags the night before she left. “I don’t know why you left this packing until the very last minute, Katie,” commented her mother at about 8:00 that night. “You’ve known you were leaving for camp tomorrow for a long time! Why didn’t you pack anything last week? Or even yesterday?” Katie rolled her eyes, just a little. “Mom, if I had packed before I would have forgotten something. But I have been making a list all year! Here, see?” Katie held up a very neat checklist for her mom to look at. “Everything I need to pack and a little box I can check off when it’s in my bag. Don’t worry, Mom! I know what I’m doing!” Katie had gathered all the things on her list in an hour and a half and the bags were piled against the front door.

The next morning, Katie’s parents drove her to the Paintbrush Ranch. They signed her in, dropped off her bags, gave her a hug and drove away, headed for home. Katie hardly had time to feel homesick at all because two minutes later, Katie’s cabin was filled up with eight other girls and two cabin leaders, both with red hair. The girl that was living on the bottom bed of Katie’s bunk introduced herself as Theresa and explained the schedule for the day: lunch at 12:00, introductions and rules and a few games until dinner, then dinner, then their first art class. It was going to be a pretty long day, but Katie was so excited that it wasn’t until after dinner when they were getting ready for their first class when she finally had time to get a little nervous. Theresa came and sat down beside her. “Wow! The first lesson! I wonder what we’re going to be learning?” “I don’t know! But I can’t wait to find out!”

One of the leaders of the camp, a tall guy with blondish hair, stood at the front of the room. “Welcome everyone! And welcome to your first art session. My name is Max and I’m going to be your instructor in Sketch Class. Can everyone please take out your pencils and some paper and we will get started!”

Katie’s heart stopped for a second and her face went a little pale. So did Theresa’s. They looked at each other. Katie whispered first, “I don’t have a pencil! I don’t think I brought one! It wasn’t on the list!” Theresa wasn’t smiling anymore. “I don’t have one either! How did we get to ART camp without remembering to pack a pencil?!” Max was waiting for the other kids to get out their pencils too. Nobody moved, but everyone looked a little squirmy. Some of the other leaders came up to Max. “Max, they don’t have pencils! Our craft order hasn’t come in yet and even if we get it tomorrow, it’s not going to help tonight!” “Go and find some pencils for them, then,” Max answered. “Max, there aren’t any. We can’t just go to the vending machine and get fifty pencils you know! The store would be closed by now and even if it were open we can’t get there! What do you expect us to do?”

Max looked around the room at all of the people. “Well, how many pencils do we have?” The leaders looked a little awkward and then walked around the room asking every kid if they had any kind of pencil that they would share. Finally one of the leaders brought back a half-chewed eraser-less knob of a pencil. “Here, from the kid three rows from the back... blue shirt over there.”

Max was beaming. He thanked the leaders and thanked the kid, held up the pencil and snapped it in half. Then he took both of those pieces and snapped them in half. Then he took those pieces and snapped them in half and so on and so on. The leaders cupped their hands together and Max poured little one-inch pieces of pencil into them. The leaders walked around with a fist full of pencil bits and a sharpener, handing out pencil chunks to every kid. Somehow, every kid got a one-inch piece of pencil and there were still a few left over... not just a few... enough so that the extra pencil jar was overflowing with little chunks of sharpened pencil!

Max turned around and started drawing on the board without saying a word about what just happened. Katie was in shock... it didn’t make any sense! How could a chewed-up five inch pencil make so many one inch pencils?! It was by far the coolest thing she had ever seen.

Katie was definitely going to have the best camp memories when she got home after this... But she was going to have a tough time getting her family to believe the story about the multiplying pencils!