Hannah loved her pencils. She carried them with her everywhere she went. In fact, she loved them so much that she had come to be known at school as “that girl with the weird number of pencils.” And it’s not as if she had an odd number of pencils — far from it! She had exactly 42 which, bordering two primes, is as even a number as any other multiple of two under the sun. It’s just that most students carried one, two, maybe up to three pencils, and no more. Carrying a weird number of pencils was simply unheard of until Hannah came along.
And then a strange thing happened. Some of the other students began to follow her example. The week after Thanksgiving, Randall started carrying 19 pens in his backpack. Returning from the Christmas holidays, Caitlin packed 28 felt-tipped markers into her handbag. And just before Spring Break, Juan was spotted stuffing 37 map pencils and a Mont Blanc into his soccer bag! Pretty soon all the kids were carrying around an unprecedented number of writing instruments.
At first, Hannah was flattered. She had started a trend. But she soon realized that the weird number of pencils was the one thing that had set her apart from her classmates. It had made her unique. Now she was just like everyone else. She withdrew into her thoughts and roamed the hallways gloomily for several weeks.
Then one day shortly before Junior Prom, Hannah left the school supply kiosk next to the gym with her arms full of Pink Pearls. She was sure no one had seen her. Later that day, while walking to her Algebra class with a spring in her step, she overheard Chelsea say, “There goes that girl with the bizarre number of erasers!”
Farce Positive 