{"id":40979,"date":"2025-11-23T11:07:37","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T17:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/?p=40979"},"modified":"2025-11-24T11:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:12:50","slug":"weekly-challenge-1022-pencil-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/?p=40979","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Challenge #1022 &#8211; Pencil case"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_2424\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-40979-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/mp3.oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/weeklychallenge1022.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/mp3.oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/weeklychallenge1022.mp3\">https:\/\/mp3.oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/weeklychallenge1022.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><ul>\n<li>Richard<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/noodlebubble.substack.com\/\">Lisa<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Tom<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lizziegudkov.blogspot.com\/\">Lizzie<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Serendipidy<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.norvaljoe.com\">Norval Joe<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Planet Z<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/?p=38330\">The next topic is PICK TWO<br \/>\nSomeone else<br \/>\nRoast<br \/>\nWhen will it stop?<br \/>\nSupport Network<br \/>\nMoonwalk<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>LISA<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>School Days<br \/>\nOur school uniform included coat and bag; so, to express our individuality we changed our pencil cases yearly. In a small town invariably half the class had the same pencil case. Handmade didn\u2019t have the cachet it has now. It was a guarantee of being bullied for the rest of your school days.<br \/>\nI spent summer up north with an old aunt where things were the same as home but they had different stationery shops&#8230; I was seen as a cosmopolitan fashion guru. I was picked first for teams. Never ate lunch alone.  And all because of my pencil case.<\/p>\n<p><strong>RICHARD<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Just in case<br \/>\nSome people carry a rabbit&#8217;s foot, others have their plushie mascots, but I had a lucky pencil case.<br \/>\nFar more practical than the totems other students would sit on their desks to bring them luck at exams, my case completely fulfilled all its usual functions. A receptacle for writing materials, erasers, pencil sharpeners and many useful odds and ends as well as chewing gum, and cleaning wipes for my glasses.<br \/>\nYou see, I had to wear special glasses\u2026<br \/>\nSpecial glasses that shifted the colours of the intricate graffiti designs on my pencil case, to reveal my carefully hidden cheat notes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TOM<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Pencil Case<\/p>\n<p>My first wife had rather large breasts. She showed me a trick that seems to me outside my general knowledge base. It a test of gravitational forces and a pencil case. If you are of an age when school supplies were actually a cool thing to have each year there are to major groups of pencil storage. The rectangle molded plastic case with a sliding 12-inch rule, which had a pencil sharpener fused on top. The other a pouch with a zipper, uncool. If you wedge pencil case #2 under a breast and it didn\u2019t hit the ground you won.<\/p>\n<p><strong>LIZZIE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>She looked at the pencil case. What&#8217;s in there, a nosy colleague asked. Nothing. She grabbed the pencil case. Pencils, obviously, someone said. She nodded, that too. Let them think that. Why are you carrying around a pencil case, that&#8217;s for kids. Yes, for kids, she nodded. I&#8217;ll give you 100 bucks if you let me look inside. She shook her head. Not in a million years would she allow that to happen and money meant nothing to her. Besides, how would she explain the ears and teeth she had collected from the guys she had buried in the marsh?<\/p>\n<p><strong>SERENDIPIDY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I kept a flick knife in my pencil case.<br \/>\nKnuckle-dusters in my lunch box.<br \/>\nThrowing stars in my school bag.<br \/>\nIn case of emergencies, I would slip razor blades inside the covers of my text books and a can of pepper spray in my pocket.<br \/>\nYou could never take too many precautions in my school.<br \/>\nIt was a tough environment where only the strong survived.<br \/>\nEven the teachers knew to watch their backs.<br \/>\nYou had to fight to survive, every day, every lesson.<br \/>\nBullying was totally out of control, and as for the bullies themselves\u2026<br \/>\nI was the best!<\/p>\n<p><strong>NORVAL JOE<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bobbi squeezed her eyes shut. \u201cI will always hate the things you did to me. But someday, we will be all each other has.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Billbert looked down to give the siblings some privacy and kicked through the trash thrown around by the tornado. His mother and Mandi tugged at Sabrina\u2019s bonds.<\/p>\n<p>Among the varied trash Billbert found a pencil case and picked it up. It rattled when he shook it.<\/p>\n<p>Inside he found a heart shaped locket. Inside it was a black and white picture of a little girl and a large oval emerald.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was my grandmother\u2019s,\u201d Sabrina gasped.<\/p>\n<p><strong>PLANET Z<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Paul\u2019s family never put a tree in their house to decorate for Christmas. Instead, they\u2019d put a tree in their big backyard every year and they\u2019ve been there a long time for generations and seeing the big trees and the little ones together and Paul saying that one was for my uncle and that one was my grandmother\u2018s and that was my dad\u2018s when he was a boy and I look on Google Maps and see the small woods on the screen. And then the map refreshes and it\u2019s all gone they sold to developers to build a housing subdivision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Richard Lisa Tom Lizzie Serendipidy Norval Joe Planet Z The next topic is PICK TWO Someone else Roast When will it stop? Support Network Moonwalk LISA School Days Our school uniform included coat and bag; so, to express our individuality we changed our pencil cases yearly. In a small town invariably half the class had &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/?p=40979\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Weekly Challenge #1022 &#8211; Pencil case&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40980,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40979\/revisions\/40980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oneadayuntilthedayidie.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}