The pencil that was too short

An original narrative about an invented workshop move.

The pencil appeared while I was clearing the narrow bench before moving into the larger workshop. It was scarcely longer than my thumb. Most of its yellow paint had gone, and the wood around the blunt lead had been cut into uneven steps.

I remembered gripping it on my first morning, pretending to study the measurements because I was afraid to begin. My hand had pressed so hard that the pencil left a small triangle in my palm. "Draw the line before you trust the saw," the supervisor had said, guiding the ruler back into place. The mark I made was faint and crooked, but it was a start.

Since then, every finished box, shelf and cabinet had begun with an ordinary pencil line. I had drawn thousands of them without remembering the first.

I held the stub over the bin. Then I carried it into the new workshop and laid it in the shallow groove above my bench. A jar of newly sharpened pencils stood below it, their points identical and unused. The old one could no longer draw much of a line, but I left it where I would see it before beginning the next.

How does the writer make the worn pencil seem important?