A few weeks ago, my second-grader asked me to please get him some "squishies" for his pencils at school.  "You put them on the pencil, and they're squishy," he told me. squishies

Silly me--I thought he was talking about pencil grips.  I figured that his teacher was trying to help the kids improve their handwriting.  So I visited the office-supply section of the local discount store, looking for pencil grips.

For the record, this is the wrong time of year to try to find pencil grips at a discount store.  But I did find some mechanical pencils with the grips built in.  Hoping that those would be good enough, I bought a pack for him.

Turns out, that was not the kind of "squishy" he was looking for.  "Squishies," apparently, are all the rage in the second grade.  They are little animals or fish that can be purchased for a quarter in gumball machines like you'd find in supermarkets.  They come in a little plastic ball, and they have a hole in the bottom so you can stick them on the eraser end of your pencil.  Who knew?

Once I finally got a good idea of what a "squishy" is and where to find one, I did buy a couple of them for my seven-year-old.  Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to patronize a gumball machine at the supermarket when you're not accompanied by a small child?  I hope nobody I know saw me!

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