If you don’t know what a maven is, don’t feel bad. I didn’t either until I read The Tipping Point. I discovered that I am, in fact, what Malcolm Gladwell calls a maven: a person who likes to pass on what they know about things. Ha ha. Apparently merchants appreciate such folks, with the free advertising they do, telling all their friends about this or that superior product.
Today my mavenly heart brings to you some good news. There do exist, in this fallen world, some very excellent eraser caps. In my Valentine’s Day post, I alluded to my utter frustration with insufficient, unbelievably inadequate erasers. We tried literally every kind of erasers that were readily available out there, from the cheap ones at Walmart during the back to school sale to the professional quality Helix brand from the art store. It isn’t that my children make so many mistakes on their school work, but that the baby has found the rubbery feel of erasers to be the perfect teething relief. We could sharpen ten new pencils and in one unguarded hour, she would have all the erasers chewed off and swallowed, just like that. The caps we put on went the same direction, until we learned to put the pencil jar up on a high shelf. Still, they broke and twisted off and smeared the boys’ papers and just made me mad in general. All those brilliantly colored promises to erase cleanly? Empty, I tell you.
I dredged up from my childhood a memory of pink eraser caps in school, very sturdy and long lasting and clean. After a bit of time on google, I found them. To save you time, I bring to you the perfect eraser, heartily endorsed by our entire family. The Arrowhead, from Papermate, packaged in substantial amounts for accident prone humans who like to remove all traces of their mistakes. I asked my boys to describe them for you. “They are pick-resistant; your kids will not be able to dig into them with fingernails. They are stiff, and don’t come off the pencil. (The baby doesn’t like this kind so much.) And they actually erase.” There you have it! “Oh, and say that you don’t know how you have lived without them.” 🙂 I think my boys are mavens, too.
I was pleased to see that buying a box of 144 makes these erasers very cheap, about 4 cents each. The “professional quality” ones that irritated us the worst cost over 25 cents each. So there you go, just a bit of advice to make the life of all my teacherly friends much easier.
wocket in my pocket 
Thank-you for your mavenly advice:) (Ha, I did think I was going to have to pull out my trusty dictionary again the moment I opened your blog!:) Thank you for defining!)LOL I’ve been wondering WHAT on earth is wrong that all our erasers break before they’re ever used well. I surely did not remember that happening so readily in my own school days, so………. thanks:)
I just checked out my link and saw that the price jumped from 5 something to 8 something… Anyway, they are still way worth buying!
Hey! I remember those erasers!
I am not sure if I feel alarm at the depth of feeling you are experiencing towards erasers, or if I simply appreciate that the mystery of a good eraser is solved and go on. Either way I enjoy hearing about a maven. I have never really heard the word maven before, especially not used in the proper context.
That is how my husband regards my obsession with the perfect eraser… A mixture of alarm and amusement. I really don’t have many of these extreme pet peeves.