Just now, I wrote something down on my blotter calendar and, realizing that it was on the wrng date, went to erase it. Since the eraser was worn all the way down, I put the back end of the pencil in my mouth, lined up the ferrule between my molars, withdrew my tongue (to avoid wetting the eraser), and chomped down, extruding a little extra rubber out the back end.
I’ve always thought of it as thrifty. Also, as my brother pointed out many many years ago, if there were ever a serious dispute over ownership of the pencil, the bitemarks could be used as evidence. Does anyone else do this? Do you think it’s weird? I can’t imagine anyone seriously not getting the rationale behind it, but some folks apparently don’t.
It’s weird, icky and gross. Seriously, I might not make an awful lot of money, but if you can’t afford a nickel for a new eraser, lemme know, I will mail you one
Yes, I do. However, I almost never use a pencil (I hate the feeling of that scrapy texture on paper – shudder), so it’s pretty much hypothetical at this point.
Yes, mostly in the hope that it being weird, icky, and gross will cause you to keep your filthy thieving hands offa my real, has-to-be-sharpened old-fashioned damn pencils, thankyousoverymuch.
In my wildest dreams, I will someday work with germaphobes, and will be able to leave my sad little pencils, with their maimed ferrules, unattended for more than a third of a second.
It’s been a long long time since the erasers attached to my pencils were anything but paper shredders. I use separate non-smeary, non-paper tearing erasers.
My reaction to ferrule biting is to wonder if you have any fillings. Yeouch!
I forget who, but awhile back someone suggested “Milking the Chimp” as a “Jump the Shark” equivalent for expending far too much effort for too little gain. I think “Biting the Ferrule” could be used similarly.
“Sure, we could walk on treadmills while working in order to power our company’s electricity, but it sort of bites the ferrule.”
When I read the thread title, I thought of the graphite ferrules used in capillary GC columns and thought “Why the heck would I do that? That would destroy it.” As for what has actually been discussed in this thread; never have. Never even thought about it.
