How do you hold your pencil? Apparently, I use the “death-grip” method — which is unfortunate if you happen to be my pencil. Or my middle finger. Yes, my propensity for clutching my pencil with brute force has resulted in a large protuberance that I (somewhat) affectionately call my “writing bump.”

I suppose there are worse things than a writing “bump.”

Well, it turns out that my unsightly writing bump is the product of an “immature pencil grasp pattern.” Okay. I have been referred to as immature before — usually after I have been spotted talking to a mitten or drawing eyes on a cantaloupe — but this is a whole new form of…um…youthfulness. Yeah, that’s it. Youthfulness.

It’s hard to eat fruit with a face.

After years of communicating via the QWERTY method, my writing bump has almost disappeared. My middle finger has returned to its pristine pre-pencil self. Finally, I can hold it up with pride. I find myself wanting to show everyone just how lovely it looks. Surprisingly, no one seems impressed. Coincidentally, this era is also known as the lonely years.

Even Mr. Rogers is proud of his “Tall Man.” (Just heard this sentence out loud for the first time. It sounds worse than it actually is.)

Do you, too, own a sizeable “writing bump?”