Tale of the lost pencils

That's two this week ..and its only wednesday !!! I don't usually create such a big fuss about losing a puny graphite stick (I never quite understood why they are also called lead pencils) . But today I just lost it , when I could'nt find even one of the 10 odd ones I saw around my bench last week. Instead, I see black pens, blue pens, markers, highlighters and every other imaginable scribbling paraphernalia sticking out of my pen stand. Even a desperate attempt of turning over all the contents and cursing did not yield the elusive pencil ! All I had wanted was one ...just one pencil to note down something useless ...on a very useful piece of paper. Why ? ...because I did not have an equally useless post-it lying around ...thats why, I needed a pencil and nothing but a pencil at that crucial moment.

During the course of these three years, I am beginning to believe my lab bench has been morphing into one ominous and intuitive black hole, which will promptly devour anything I look for.

I could have just sneaked around and seized one from my lab mate's area . But my case was one of "once bitten twice shy " . Once I had picked up a pen casually from my lab mate's overflowing pen stand, and then promptly forgot to return it . Now the main reason I got caught red-handed with her pen was that in my enthusiasm, I did'nt notice that she had pink-taped her pen so she could GPS track it anytime some idiot like me 'borrowed' it and never gave it back. Try explaining yourself when you are caught with a very annoyed lab mate's pink-taped pen !.

After a good 15 mins of running around like a hen with its head cut, I eventually found a piece of tissue and breathed a sigh of relief.

I can imagine what the US must have gone through. "Where are those WMD ?? We could have sworn it was right there !!! "