The Case and The Compass

It was red, about 8 inches long and 4 inches high, and closed with a zipper along the top.  I was never fortunate enough to own one of the expensive pencil boxes flaunted by those kids from the wealthier families, but my pencil case more than served its purpose from when I received it in third grade right up into junior high school.  I loved all the things that little red case held-- pencils, the yellow kind with the erasers on the end; those nice pink and gray erasers with one end, the softer pink side, for erasing pencil marks, and the other side, gray and grittier, for erasing marks in ink, though  somewhat less successfully; a mechanical lead pencil, with a little box of lead, and a few tiny extra erasers; a six-inch ruler, at first of wood and later plastic; a small hand-held  pencil sharpener------all things which fit so well, smelled so good, and behaved so well in the confines of their little red compartment. And then there was the compass; I didn't have the same feeling for it at all.  It was metal, never seemed to fully live up to its promise, and  had that sharp pointed end capable of puncturing not only the red case, but also fingers that were grasping for a pencil, eraser, or ruler.  I didn't really understand  its purpose either, other than to draw a circle, and even then it depended on whether that broken-off stub of  pencil fit into that metal, supposedly adjustable, shaft.  I considered the compass an intruder into the caressable items of my pencil case, a hard and misshapen thing with no clear purpose.  A harbinger of things to come.