Markers and Erasers

2019-10-07

When I was in the fifth grade, we were sometimes given dry-erase markers and
small whiteboards to draw on. Occasionally, we'd use them for lessons, but
mostly they came out when it was raining and we couldn't go outside to play. For
a time, my friends and I would play a "video game" with these unlikely
implements. One person would draw a target, another would slowly move the marker
up and down a vertical edge of the board, and a third---the player---would
choose the precise moment when they wanted the marker-bearer to "shoot". The
marker-bearer would then "simulate" a "shot" with "realistic gravity" at the
target, and we would all judge damage incurred on the target as well as the
veracity of the simulation. Curiously, the player would only call the simulation
unfair if he didn't hit the target, and the target-drawer would always take the
opposite position.

In remembering that little game, I also remembered a strange assumption---an
extrapolation, really---about markers and erasers. I knew, of course, that
markers could leave ink on the board and that erasers could wipe it away. That
was obvious. I further knew that the ink left by the markers was a physical
substance, since the erasers got dirty, and accumulated ink would form a sort of
dust that could be pushed around. To me, it seemed that markers and erasers were
opposites; one created, one erased. It was as if the Expo corporation had at
their disposal the immense power to instantiate two equally-powerful forces in
the universe, intended to work together, but never to meet.

Somewhere along the way, nine-year-old me formed a question with frightening
implications: what would happen if you touched a marker *directly* to an eraser?
My little mind raced. Well, I thought, since the marker marks and the eraser
erases, the only possibility is that touching the marker directly to the eraser
would result in *all* of the ink in the marker getting sucked out of it and into
the eraser *instantly*. I recall being afraid for some time after that to ever
touch the two halves of this reaction together, lest I ruin both. (I may have
also inserted that memory after repeated rememberings over the years, but I
can't say.)

Obviously, this is an incorrect conclusion. Touching a marker to an eraser,
while counter-productive and a little silly, doesn't result in some
matter-antimatter annihilation phenomenon. At some point, I gathered up the
courage to try it, and I remember being both relieved and a little disappointed
at the uninteresting result.

Every time I've remembered that story since, I've idly searched for some meaning
in it. It sounds like it could be profound, at least to me. Perhaps this is the
core of some commentary on creation and deletion, sources and sinks, good and
evil. Or maybe it's the hook in a cautionary tale about blind extrapolation
without evidence. It could even start a discussion about childhood curiosity and
learning.

I've yet to come up with anything satisfying to say about it. Maybe the whole
thing is nothing more than a story about a child who thought a thing was true
and turned out to be wrong. I don't know, but I know for sure that I like
remembering it.