"ROLLER DERBY QUEEN"
- katharinetonti
- Feb 10
- 2 min read
02.10.2026
Good morning, everyone.
We are gathered today to bid farewell to one of my favorite pieces of office equipment: Penny the Pencil Sharpener. She has been with me for the better part of the millennium, and it has been surprisingly difficult to part with such a loyal office mate.
Penny spent her days unobtrusively perched on a shelf, always ready to serve at a moment’s notice. Her only requirement was the occasional infusion of four double-A batteries, which—once installed—revved up her little engine so she could get back to work.
Aside from her sleek design (somewhere between Art Deco and Space Age), one of Penny’s most endearing qualities was her steadfast refusal to judge how sharp I liked my pencils.
She will also be missed by her longtime neighbors: Lucy the lava lamp (think Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds when she’s turned on) and Puck, the clear plastic paper-clip jar.
I hesitate to use the word replace, since Penny’s demise is still so recent. However, I rely on my A.W. Faber-Castell 9000 6B pencils every day, so a successor was unavoidable. I could have purchased one of those handheld relics from days gone by—assuming they still exist—but instead I opted for a model as close to Penny in both style and function as I could find.
Enter Spike (named after the Roller Derby Queen in the Jim Croce song). And she really is “the meanest hunk of woman anybody’s ever seen.” At least a third larger than Penny and towering over all her neighbors except Lucy, she has enough power to sharpen tree branches, let alone pencils. She also requires a plug and an actual electrical outlet, because, of course she does. One more thing: she stops running when she thinks the pencil is sharp enough.
I’d return her, but frankly, I’m afraid she might stage a workplace coup. And between Lucy’s psychedelic mood swings and Puck’s tendency to fall off the shelf without warning, I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth for an office uprising.
Your tape dispenser reminds me of a rabbit doing yoga.
As a pencil enthusiast and fan of powered sharpeners, I enjoyed this post from start to finish, Kate. RIP Penny, and long live Spike!
Laughter ensues. I won't use pencils because I don't like the way they smell. However, we have a workbench-mounted, hand-crank pencil sharpener in the basement. This was likely installed by Allan, when the home was built by him in 1952. He was the shop teacher at the local high school and Ray's father-in-law. Hence, no reason to discard tools that could be useful. While I support removing clutter, tools must remain. We actually used the 5' long spud bar once.
Most of my music listening occurred on the radio, hence my belief (for decades) that the words were "Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds." This seemed to be an admirable goal - to wear so much sparkle that you couldn't b…