OK so I put this on MY BLOG but
  • No one reads it
  • People don't click links
so I am going to repost it here so that you can read it. I've seriously had a lot of discussion with people about stuff like this and I'm pretty sure there's been some strange stuff you've seen that you think you're crazy for having noticed; feel free to discuss any.

I figure this is a neat contrast to our giant religion vs. sciencefest because both my religious beliefs and my scientific thought agree that this event could not possibly have happened, yet I experienced it and have spent the last several hours combing my memories for some kind of situation where I could have enabled the event and it just didn't happen.

Keep discussion serious though; I give my word this is true based on a very thorough analysis of the situation and my memories. I noticed the anomaly today and after letting it sink in for several hours I am losing sleep tonight trying to figure out what happened.

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I wanted to start with something that happened to me that is improbable and work my way up to the inexplicable, but the improbable requires photo evidence and I have to get up early so it's too much effort.

What I am about to explain is seriously true and happened recently to me. My mother and I were talking about random weird things tonight and it was only when I explained this that I realized how strange it really was. This is something I will probably go to my grave and never understand.

It starts with the mechanical pencil I use, the Pentel P205. I like it because it writes well, lasts a long time, and recently doesn't seem to jam much. Also I prefer 0.5mm lead to the 0.7mm lead that many pencils use. The single disadvantage these pencils present over other pencils is the tiny eraser. Typically, the eraser lasts about a month for me; because of this I always carry around an eraser pen or one of those drafting white plastic erasers (this habit started when I was taking lots of math classes and erasing entire pages at a time).

Due to absentmindedness, I have lost something like 8 or 9 of these pencils throughout the time I've used them. I'd also frequently use one to do homework and forget to put it back in the backpack, leaving me in class with no writing utensil. My first preventative strategy against this action involved carrying two pencils; this worked for a time but ultimately led to me forgetting the first pencil, using the spare, finding out the first was misplaced, then losing the spare. My second strategy proved much better. I kept one pencil in the backpack and another in my dorm room; I'd only use the backpack pencil in classes and the dorm room pencil in the dorm room. This superior method led me to several semesters with no lost pencils.

So I recently took a trip to Austin with my fiancee on an apartment hunting mission. We successfully got an apartment we both agreed was pleasing, so all's good there. The inexplicable event revolves around the pencil I took with me to Austin. Now, the two pencils are important because there is a distinguishing mark between them. The pencil in my backpack was on its third semester and had no eraser left as I had worn it down. The pencil in my dorm room was brand new and thus had lost very little eraser. Keep this mark in mind, it is the key to the mystery.

So I took the pencil from my backpack (no eraser) to Austin with me, tucked in the binding of my spiral notebook. When I got back to school, I ran a check and realized I had never returned the pencil to my backpack. I assumed I had left it in my car, at my house, or lost it on the trip, so I tucked the pencil from my dorm room into my backpack and reminded myself to go looking for the lost pencil. It wasn't in my car, and couldn't find it in my house. So I just decided it had been lost and moved on with my life.

Until I took the eraser cap off of the pencil I had and noticed how much eraser it had. None.

I took the pencil with no eraser with me to Austin; the pencil with the eraser was tucked into my lap desk in my dorm room. I got to school, noticed I was missing a pencil, and retrieved the pencil from my lap desk. This pencil should have had an eraser but it did not. I didn't find the old pencil and put it in the backpack without thinking. I wrote 3 days of notes in pen until I decided to give up on finding the lost pencil and I vividly remember removing the pencil from my lap desk, telling myself it was a bad idea all the while.

The only explanations I can come up with involve things that are impossible. I could not have accidentally swapped the two pencils earlier; I never carry two pencils at once and only use the correct pencil based on its location. If I used the backpack pencil while in my room I would be unable to place it in the lap desk without noticing I had used the wrong pencil; in that case it would be silly to remove the lap desk pencil and replace it with the backpack pencil. It is impossible for me to use the lap desk pencil while not in my room. I cannot explain how this happened, and quite frankly it creeps me out.