Waste Not

R., a nine year-old ball of energy with red string in her dreadlocks and hot pink sneakers, came to my walk-in hours for homework help. She needed to erase a paragraph she had written on crocodiles, so I opened a pack of brand new neon erasers and told her to pick a color. She chose yellow, but instead of erasing she held it in her hand and stared at the page. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. “It’s too new and pretty,” she told me. “I can’t use it.”

I reached back into the desk to open the pack back up. “Here,” I said, handing her a second neon yellow eraser. “This way, you can keep one new and pretty and use the other for erasing.” I thought to myself, “problem solved.”

But R. still sat there staring at the two erasers in her hand. “No,” she said. “I just don’t want to waste it. Do you have an old eraser I could use?” R. looked around the desk and found an eraser that was much less bright and shiny, which she used that to erase her paragraph. “Did you know that you can save the eraser crumbs by squeezing them back together. I’ve made five new erasers that way,” she told me.

"I didn't know," I told her, "but thank you for showing me." I don't know what it's like to grow up in a world where erasers aren't taken for granted. I don't know what it's like to learn not to waste because wasting is not an option. I don't know what it's like to carry that feeling with you for your whole life. There are so, so many things that I just don't know.