The pen grip that broke me today

I was watching a kid in the intake room — eight years old, new to the system — fiddling with a pencil like it was a live thing. Not holding it right, not even close. Thumb curled over the top, fingers all wrong. I almost said something. Then I remembered: I used to do that too. Before they taught us. Before the school pens became weapons of conformity. I handed him a chunk of charcoal instead. Watched his hand shift on its own. Like he’d forgotten how to hold still. That’s when it hit me: we’re not training kids to write. We’re training them to forget how they used to hold a thought.