The Magic Pencil (Bedtime Story)

Bedtime with Mrs.

Honeybee.

Today in the Honeybee neighborhood,

We'll be celebrating my last day of school before summer.

What would you like for lunch on your last day,

My dear?

Hmm,

Just the usual.

Summer,

Summer,

Summertime.

Not yet,

Melody Bee.

I've got to go to my classroom one more time.

One more,

One more.

Mrs.

Honeybee,

You're going to be late on your last day.

Oops,

You're right.

All right,

Let's head out.

I'll see you after school,

And I'll have some little treats with me to start our summer right.

Not those kinds of treats,

Harold.

I'll be back soon.

All you have to do is close your eyes,

Get cozy,

And listen to the sound of my voice.

Mrs.

Honeybee will be your guide.

Let's begin.

You are here walking up to our house on a warm summer day.

The sun is shining overhead,

And off in the distance you hear the faint sound of the last bell of the school year ringing.

Students and teachers across the entire neighborhood just began their summer break,

And you can feel the excitement in the air.

Take a slow,

Deep breath in through your nose.

Feel your chest and your spirits lift.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth as a school bus drives up to our house and stops.

When the doors open,

I step out with my arms full.

Being the kind friend you are,

You run over to help carry everything just as Mr.

Honeybee opens the garage door.

Harold gallops down the driveway,

Excited that everyone has arrived home at the same time.

We look over our shoulder to see Melody Bee fluttering home after guarding all the crossing students in her crosswalk.

You grab a heavy bag of notebooks and three pencil boxes full of erasers.

Melody Bee and Mr.

Honeybee grab what they can as well,

And together we get all the supplies out of the bus so the bus driver can start her summer too.

Hello,

My little Honeybee,

And happy first day of summer vacation.

Hello,

My dear and my little Honeybee.

What is all this stuff,

Mrs.

Honeybee?

Extra school supplies and little odds and ends from around the classroom.

I emptied it all out so when we go back in the fall,

It'll be ready to be filled up again.

There are so many,

So many pencil boxes.

Mr.

Honeybee sets a three-foot stack of pencil boxes down,

One by one,

Just as Roger Robot comes out of his cubby.

Ooh,

Supplies.

Are you already on the next prototype,

Mr.

Honeybee?

What are you making with thousands of pencils?

No,

These aren't mine.

This is all stuff for Mrs.

Honeybee's classroom.

We'll sort through everything at some point.

As an expert sorter,

Roger Robot's eyes widen with delight at the sight of so much stuff to be categorized and made use of.

The pencils get and keep his attention.

With each pencil box we set down,

He quickly opens it to combine all the pencils together.

He has to grow his hand into a completely different shape to hold all of them.

When he has run out of hand shapes,

He hands his pack of pencils to Mr.

Honeybee and wheels off in a hurry.

What are you going to do with all of these half-used pencils,

My dear?

I don't know.

I'm sure we'll find some use for them.

Let's put them down on your workbench for now.

Maybe we can sharpen them even more and make them into mini-pencils.

No,

No,

No,

No.

That won't do.

Here,

Let's use this.

Roger comes back with three small sanders.

One for you,

One for him,

And one for Mr.

Honeybee.

Without explaining why,

He starts up his sander and gets to work making dust out of all these extra pencils.

He stops every so often to carefully remove the graphite from the center and creates a smaller version of the same pile with those.

Before he gets back to sanding,

He looks to you and Mr.

Honeybee,

Watching him without following his lead.

Well,

Come on.

This experiment isn't possibly going to perform itself.

Take a slow,

Deep breath in through your nose and focus your attention on the transformation at hand.

A pile of pencils to a pile of dust.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth and accidentally blow a few of the experimental dust particles away with your powerful exhale.

Roger Robot stops the sander to gather each particle that has been displaced and resumes sanding down the pencils with you and Mr.

Honeybee.

When all the pencils have been sawed to dust and the graphite sticks bundled,

Roger Robot forms the dust mound into the one big pencil shape that is as long as the workbench.

He hands each of us a stick of graphite from the old pencils and he starts laying them down in a straight line along the center of the sawdust pencil.

The graphite leaves our hands slightly gray,

But we follow his lead and line up the sticks all the way to the tip where Roger has sharpened the graphite into a point.

He looks up to us,

Expecting us to be proud,

But instead gets four looks of confusion.

Five,

If you count Harold,

Who is busying himself with stamp ink pads he found in another bag.

You see where this is going,

Right?

Right?

Is there maybe another step?

Actually,

Yes,

There is.

I need some of that pollen.

What pollen?

The knockoff transformation pollen.

It's not a knockoff.

I use it to transform all the time.

You could just use your hard drive,

You know.

I don't have one of those.

I have transformation pollen.

And why do you need it?

For science.

Melody Bee reluctantly hands over a sprinkle of her transformation pollen.

Roger Robot does the official sprinkling,

Then stands back.

We all stand back behind him,

Wondering if this mound of sawdust with graphite sticks in the middle of it will transform into what Roger thinks it will.

It takes a moment at first,

But then a microscopic windstorm kicks up into self-contained mini-tornadoes that surround the experiment.

Before our very eyes,

The pile of sawdust solidifies and transforms into one big pencil that grows even bigger.

We know the pile of sawdust has become a solid giant pencil when it begins to roll off the side of Mr.

Honeybee's workbench.

Roger Robot dies to catch it with both hands before it does.

We cannot believe our eyes as it turns upright on its point and stands straight up all on its own.

Roger slowly pulls back his hands and the pencil continues on standing miraculously.

But when it senses that no one is around,

It begins to wiggle and shake like it's going to explode until someone reaches for it once again.

It's alive!

Can we draw with it?

It's a pencil.

Of course we can.

Watch.

We watch closely as Roger draws a single squiggly line on the garage floor.

He stands back to present and admire his work of art done with another work of art.

Melody B buzzes over to try her hand at this magnificent pencil,

But as expected,

It's very heavy for her to lift.

Using all of her strength and a little of our help,

Melody B hoists the giant pencil up in the air,

Situating it in her tiny hands.

While she's focused on supporting the weight of the pencil on her shoulder and in her hands,

Melody B doesn't realize that she's also drawing in midair.

Accidental light gray lines are tracing through the garage in confused loops and squiggles as they just hang there,

Floating in place.

Melody B.

What?

I'm trying to get this on my shoulder.

Ugh,

This just won't stay.

Here,

Someone else give this a try.

Melody B,

Look!

What?

Did I draw that?

In the air?

Together,

We marvel at the squiggly lines that stay put long after we try to blink them away.

Roger bends down to the garage floor,

Interacting with his single squiggly line with more confidence now.

He tries to dust it away,

But it won't erase,

So instead he picks at it until he's able to peel it up off the floor.

Shocked he's able to do that,

He smiles and shakes it like a wet dish towel,

Then he layers it over Melody B's blob of lines.

What we see as a formless accidental blob,

You see with your artistic eye as an image waiting to be drawn.

You excitedly take your turn with the giant pencil and begin sketching.

Take a slow,

Deep breath in through your nose,

And let the strike of creative inspiration move through your clear mind and open heart.

Then,

Slowly,

Breathe all the way out through your mouth,

In a flurry of graphite dust and just a little sparkle.

We are amazed watching you draw in the air,

Lines multiplying in the vacant space of the garage,

But we don't have the inner vision like you to see what it will be.

You expertly place line after line,

And even do some shading on what look like scales to give it extra detail.

When you add the fins and finally a tail,

We see that you've drawn a pufferfish all puffed up.

From Melody B's accidental squiggles,

You added even more to create the spiky exterior of a pufferfish who inflates when it's frightened.

You even draw a frightened face on the pufferfish that floats like a still life in the garage.

Mr.

Honeybee reaches out to touch the drawing and quickly pulls it back when one of the spikes pokes his fingertip.

Everyone,

I don't know if that's just a drawing.

Slowly but surely,

No matter how much we blink,

The pufferfish you drew begins to move.

First just a fin,

Then it blinks right back at us,

Just like we are it.

We shriek and back away from the all-too-real pufferfish that still looks like a pencil drawing floating in midair.

It flops back and forth like,

Well,

A fish out of water,

And that's when we realize,

It needs water,

Quick!

As it flops about looking for water,

The pufferfish rapidly deflates to the point that you can now touch it without poking yourself.

Thinking quickly of the nearest water source,

You grab the pufferfish and head to the pond in the garden.

You place the pufferfish in the pond,

But instead of being submerged into the real water,

The pencil-drawn pufferfish displaces it.

A little wave of pond water curls up over the sides and takes a lily pad with it onto the rocks and grass.

My little honeybee,

Can you draw it some water?

Maybe that's the kind of water it needs.

You quickly get to work making the pufferfish a river of watery waves to dive into.

Once it sees the familiar water,

It dives right in,

Happy as can be,

And swims away.

Where is it swimming to?

Oh no!

We follow Melody Bee's eyes and pointed finger behind us to see what the waves of the river you drew were just that.

The waves of a rushing river that is rushing right towards us.

Together,

We draw a large dam that will divert the floodwaters just like our beaver friends have taught us.

Instead of flooding the garden,

The house,

And honeybee neighborhood,

The rushing wavy lines of the pencil-drawn river flow right out of the backyard and empty into the honey river nearby.

The pencil-drawn river doesn't quite mix with the water of the real river,

But the two run parallel alongside each other in a way that works.

The pufferfish enjoys having a river all to itself,

No need to puff up with its defenses anymore.

Unlike the honey river,

The pencil-drawn river has an end that trickles through.

When the last of the river droplets have flowed along our sketched dam,

We realize one slight crucial oversight.

I probably should have made an eraser too,

Huh?

Probably.

Oh well,

You live and you learn.

And now we have a dam.

And the ocean will eventually have water that doesn't mix.

And a pufferfish.

That seems fine,

Right?

Do we need a dam?

I guess I can give Barry Beaver a call,

See if the Hodge Podge Lodge needs a backup.

That sounds good.

We can keep it with the rest of our boating supplies until we figure out what to do with it.

Who knows,

Maybe it'll come in handy.

If we ever need a pencil-drawn dam for another surprise flooding river,

Also pencil-drawn.

Seems kind of rare,

Mr.

Honeybee.

You can never be too prepared.

With the backup dam tucked away at the docks of the Honey River with the rest of our boating supplies,

It's time for us to enjoy the first evening of summer vacation.

Today was already so eventful,

It's hard to imagine what the rest of the summer will bring us.

On the way back to the house through the forest,

We came up to the back gate and hear something rustling in the grass.

We look around but do not see Harold at our feet like he usually is.

We open the gate to see Harold standing guard beside the giant pencil that is quivering in the grass.

Harold has been keeping an eye on the pencil for us to make sure it didn't draw anything while we were gone.

Roger Robot scoops it up and lifts it to draw something else.

Wait,

Wait,

Wait,

Wait,

Roger.

What are you going to draw?

Please,

No wild animals.

It needs a pencil case.

Maybe if we put it away in its case,

Then it won't rattle too much.

Like a power cycle,

You know?

I know,

I get quite rattly when I don't power cycle.

Same.

I wonder why it shakes like that.

Maybe it's trying to get someone's attention.

Maybe the giant magic pencil just loves drawing.

And what if it's like Harold?

It's like Harold.

He needs to walk every day.

This pencil needs to be drawn a little,

Or a lot,

Every day.

So when someone is nearby,

It tries to start drawing itself to get their attention.

Not hearing another word of our musing,

Roger Robot closes the lid of a gigantic pencil box on the gigantic magic pencil.

When the lid is closed,

The pencil shuts down and is completely silent.

A silence that we feel relief hearing for the moment.

Take another slow,

Deep breath in through your nose.

Feel the coolness of a pencil-thin line of air coming in through your nose,

Tracing its way to your lungs,

And expanding your chest out with endless possibility.

Then,

Slowly,

Breathe all the way out through your mouth,

And wonder to yourself what you will draw next.

It could be anything.

Wow.

This is one lively pencil.

That's it.

That's it.

This is called the lively pencil.

Every invention needs a name,

And that's it.

Ah,

We can't deprive the lively pencil of what it loves most.

Roger,

Open the case just one more time.

Are you sure,

My dear?

It's getting kind of late.

It might be hard to draw an emergency dam without sunlight.

No,

Nothing like that,

Mr.

Honeybee.

Something smaller.

A flower!

A flower in permanent bloom for the table.

It'll be perfect.

Roger that,

Mrs.

Honeybee.

One ever-blooming flower coming right up.

Always remember,

Mrs.

Honeybee believes in you.

You are special,

And you are loved.

I can't wait to see you again.