Pencil Man
The pencil moved through the air, dipping down and then moving back out, an untraceable number of twists and turns that drew a picture. The pencil did not draw the image on paper, but led the portrait through the sky, carved art into the old tree in the backyard and even flowed across the plastic slip-and-slide. he pencil stabbed the ground; flailed, stomped, and then flew back amongst the clouds. The wielder of this magic wand created sounds to stimulate the atmosphere, allowing his visions and ideas to creep out of his scepter of thought.
The artist was me. The pencil was like an ordinary toy for an ordinary child, but it was not ordinary: it was the focus that unleashed my creativity.

Compare it to the way a 3 year old moves a doll in front of his face and acts as if this figure was part of a great adventure. He sees the doll, but everything around it changes to fit the story the child is crafting. Except, I was 7 years old; my toy was a pencil, an object meant to inscribe its master's creations onto paper. In simple terms, I was playing with a pencil.

Imaginably, I met some pretty tough opposition to my extraordinary habit. I cannot even consider attempting to count the number of time my parents said, 'Enough Daniel. Put the pencil away and go do something else.' I would pause until my parents left the area and then continue to complete my masterpiece. I could not even consider creating during school or my time with my fellow peers because of the inevitable fate of being shunned. I found myself frequently sitting at home, alone, myself and my creations.

Maybe it is just human nature to shun what they don't understand, or perhaps our culture is built to put down creativity. If school mates don't understand what a person does or says they classify him as weird, throwing him out to interact with his own kind. It is no surprise that many of my friends are not considered to be the norm. But, it is often the strange ones that really have something to offer humanity, and I know that an old German immigrant with crazy hair, who couldn't talk till he was 10 and continually mused over the truths behind nature, would agree with me. Albert Einstein, a man who spent his time wandering in the woods and had little desire to interact with other humans when he was young.

I am still full of imagination and the possibilities for creation, but I have changed them into a more versatile form: I plan to create using my knowledge of math and science, following in the foot steps of the German scientist. The beauty of science is that, like the pencil, science can lead to an unimaginable number of creations and representations of what I truly am. Yet, when I am all alone doing my homework, or falling fast asleep in one of my classes, I take out a pencil. I won't make a sound, I may move it a little, but I will stare at it. I will pour my emotions, my soul, into the pencil, and just like that I will be gone, if only for a couple minutes. For human imagination is the illustration that represents what we can accomplish and become if we put our minds to it.