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The Pen is Mightier than the Sword

Small Lessons

Valdar and Astralis
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Valdar and Astralis

Valdar and Astralis

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It's odd how things hit you, sometimes. Like a stapler did the other day. I've always been fascinated by those things, probably because of their potential for violence, and possibly as a shiny dispenser. At a young age, I figured out how to make caltrops from staples, and later on when threatened, took to carrying one around in my pocket as other kids did pocket-knives. I figured it'll hurt a hell lot more with staples sticking out from your forehead than just a cut.

 

Eventually, after childhood paranoia passed and never encountering an instance requiring the use of violent stapling, the stapler graduated to being the favoured object of twiddling. Several staple-clogged vacuum bags later, however, I very firmly stuck the stapler back into a distant shelf and switched to pens.

 

However, temptation loomed on Tuesday when I set foot into the photocopy/print area of my university and spied an unusual lump on the binding table besides the puncher. As I watched in amazement, one chap walked up to the device, and shoved a sheaf of papers into it's gaping maw. A short bzzzt later, he walked away with his notes neatly stapled!

 

My jaw dropped. An ELECTRIC stapler! What a wonder of technology this was! My mind immediately began churning away for any notes I had yet to print, and cursed my home computer for processing the vast majority last night.

 

Fortunately, it was still the first week of the semester, and a thoughtfully environmentalist Physics lecturer had left nearly fifty pages of text on the Online Blackboard. I scampered for a computer, and ten minutes later I was happily straightening my centimetre thick stack of still warm paper by the stapler.

 

Now, based on past experience, a centimetre worth of lose paper, roughly fifty sheets, is quite a lot to staple even with those monstrous foot tall pile drivers. This stapler was but a hemispherical dome roughly half the size of my head. To my delight, however, the notch just fit my notes, and. . .

 

 

bzzzzt!

 

I withdrew a stapled book! It was a snug fit, with barely a millimetre worth of staple on the back, but it held! One centimetre, I had to do it again.

 

bzzzt!

 

And it was through!

 

As I stood admiring my handiwork, however, I noticed the book was somewhat lopsided. In my haste to staple for the second time, I had neglected to straighten my notes.

 

I frowned.

 

This wouldn't do, but at least I'd get to staple again.

 

Undoing the back of the staple, I pulled. Oh how I pulled. I pulled until my short ragged nails bent backwards. Car keys would find no leverage, nor did any pieces of metal in the vicinity. Teeth proved equally futile.

 

This was getting embarrassing. The electric stapler lacked the thin metal flaps at the rear of conventional staplers that allowed you to withdraw fasteners, leaving a red faced man, expression twisted in a rictus of pain, standing in the middle of the copy area with both hands over his mouth and a freshly bound book between his legs.

 

It's in times of need, that god calls bearing enlightenment, usually beginning with, 'You bloody idiot'. Now was such a time, and I gaped into the heavens, face bathed in the light of. . .well, the ceiling lights. But the point is, if life were a role-playing game, this would be the point where a big yellow sign pops up going, "You gained experience!. . .dumbass."

 

So I placed the book on the table, and pulled pages away from the staple, five at a time. It was quite easy. I could almost swear I could still hear god's voice in my head.

 

"That's why you wasted two years of your life, now go forth and make babies."

 

Perhaps the second bit was my libido, actually, but I got the point. Two years of doing too much and nothing, and I turned back to the electric stapler with respect to re-staple my notes.

 

Before me was the machine that could push steel through fifty sheets of paper on 240 Volts of Electricity. I am only human, and not a very physically gifted one to boot. The only way to approach the problem was to detach one sheet at a time.

 

One thing at a time.

 

 

And that was how the stapler taught me humility.

 

Edit: Spelling

Edited by Valdar and Astralis
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