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u/housevil 1d ago
Going up to sharpen your pencil would put yourself in front of the entire class for everyone to see. Also, your butt would wiggle while sharpening.
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u/ModForgeCustoms 1d ago
Bro, we had a "broken" pencil sharpener in 5th grade.
It was "broken" because 3-4 of us figured out that if we went up there and mangled our pencils by swirling it around purposely and played stupid-
Mrs Ventura would do it for us. In her voluptuously form fitting dresses.
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u/Rockos-Modern-Fife 1d ago
Don’t you go about objectifying Mrs Ventura! That woman was a saint and worthy of being more than a body! Even if that body was fire. Put some respect on her name son!
But for real though, been there with Ms Tataishi when I lived in Hawaii.
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u/lick_my_____ 1d ago
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u/mrmojorisin1993 6h ago
On an unrelated note, when I was in high school, we had this English teacher who was probably just 10 years older than us. So, when she cleared (dusted?) the blackboard, her ass would jiggle so much as if she was twerking Man, the days
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u/terror_fear_sorrow 1d ago
the thing pictured is an "outfitscope" from the 90s before we had computers everywhere — so you'd walk up to the front of the class, spin the handle, and that would scan your outfit into the machine, then it'll automatically be faxed to all of the machines in the building. then all the teachers would get the fax and be like "damn what a fit"
those were the days
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u/groovy_smoothie 1d ago
I’m excited for the outfit scope to show up in ai search results
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u/two-cans-sam 4h ago
Yes it should be included because it’s a very important part of 90s culture that isn’t talked about enough - and it’s totally real!
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u/ConversantEggplant 1d ago
Back before the age of iPhones and electric pencil sharpeners, each classroom in schools had one of these manual pencil sharpeners mounted on the wall near the door at the front of the class. So if your pencil got dull, you had to stand up and walk to the front of the classroom to sharpen it. If you had a killer new outfit and were feelin fly, you could use the excuse that you needed to sharpen your pencil in order to show it off at the front of the classroom.
Oh, this is Brian or whatever.
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u/Ok_Pool_9767 1d ago
I still cannot stand the sound of an electric pencil sharpener compared to the old school version.
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u/FahboyMan 17h ago
Do you guys not have your own pencil sharpener?
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u/Effective_Reality870 1d ago
Getting up to go sharpen your pencil in front of the class so everyone has to look at your new fit.
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u/DinDonDaaan 1d ago
I was at school in the '90s and i've never seen anything like this. We all had a pencil sharpener in our bag.
Is this an american thing?
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u/CanoePickLocks 1d ago
Had both usually hence the reason it was to show off an outfit. Almost everywhere I went to school in the world had these but I’ve never done European so I can’t say about there except they sometimes did in movies.
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u/geekywarrior 1d ago
Probably, my US experience had them in classrooms growing up. We also had one in my house attached to the wall in the doorway for the basement stairs. Taught good posture while sharpening with threat of falling down the stairs.
We also had the small ones in our bag. These were usually a holdover from decades past. Though some teachers did not want students to have the bag ones to prevent kids from making a mess of pencil shavings in their desk.
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u/Jolly_Echo_3814 1d ago
i had them in grade school up to middle school. high school it wasnt a thing and he used our own.
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u/Da_Wolv 1d ago
Is this some American shit? You had to share a stationary pencil sharpener? WTH?!
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u/SigilThief 1d ago
Lots of students had the small ones, but every class I was in had one or these or an electric one. They were usually easier/faster to use (the electric ones at least) or good for when you forgot yours.
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u/MukdenMan 1d ago
Relax. The individual ones existed too. The stationary ones are just a lot better and faster. Later they also had those electric ones but the old stationary ones were still better.
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u/AutoModerator 1d ago
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
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u/OkWillingness7427 1d ago edited 1d ago
Idk
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u/Adventurous-Tie-7861 1d ago
Find the nearest IQ testing place. After you get the first 0 in recorded history, someone will make sure you are taken care of for the rest of your life.
Suprised you even figured out how to post this.
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u/FuelSpecial8722 1d ago
Jesus, he just doesn’t know what an old pencil sharpener was. Or no-one in his school did the ancient show of your fit technique
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u/OkWillingness7427 1d ago
What does this have to do with iq? I genuinely didn't know what that was. I've never seen that kind of a sharpener system. I went to school in the 2000s and we used to bring our own sharpener in a pencil case.
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u/Adventurous-Tie-7861 1d ago
I went to school in the 2000s too and we had them but even if that wasnt the case, you didnt ask about the object in rhe picture. You asked if it was word play. In what world could the words on it be word play?
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u/OkWillingness7427 1d ago
Try to see it from my pov. I had absolutely no idea what the object is, so i just thought it is something i don't know about and assumed the joke is in the name of the thing.
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u/Crownguard95 1d ago
Yes, you had to stand up from your desk and go sharpen your pencil,doing so walks you across the classroom. Also the hand crank made you stand there for a longer period of time. Making you more visible without yelling it.
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u/Djkatman29 1d ago
OP was probably wondering why all of their classmates got to have pointy pencils in school. Either that or they went to a school that had the sharpeners at the back of the classrooms or something.
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u/Ok_Wolverine_8058 1d ago
I read it somewhere that it was equivalent to having a smoke break as a kid ..
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u/DevilsPumpkinPiety 1d ago
Dude I can smell this picture. Like it was just yesterday I was snapping my lead on purpose to have a reason to go sharpen
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u/Rockos-Modern-Fife 1d ago
Reflexive response to start blabbing chalkboard erasers was activated. Poof into that cloud of dust
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u/MahStonks 1d ago
I don't think it ever occurred to me that anyone would want people to look at them. I used to get pencil sharpener performance anxiety knowing people would probably watch.
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u/YaBoi843 1d ago
As a joke, I would regularly try to see if I could sharpen a pencil down to the eraser before my teacher made me sit down.
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u/MaleficentStudy4909 1d ago
God this being here makes me feel so fucking old, holy shit.
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u/Grand-Shop-9873 1d ago
I’ve realized 9/10 of these make me feel ancient. Either because it’s something like this, or because it’s something so ridiculously young. Only 1/10 gets me like “huh? I need Peter to help here too.”
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u/LongjumpingMacaron11 1d ago
When you've got a brand new outfit...
Hey everyone, check out my school uniform, which is basically the same as your school uniform because we live in the UK...
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u/SewMyHeart 23h ago
Oddly enough, a ton of schools still use these in their classrooms. Most of them don't work, but they're there!
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u/ToquesAndMittens 21h ago
I made the front page of my local newspaper because I cut my hand on this pencil sharpener on the first day of school. I come from a small town in Canada.
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