They Told Us They Could Erase Pen, But It Turns Out Blue Erasers Have An Entirely Different Purpose
Going to class and using pen was a pretty confident move. What, you don't think you're going to make a mistake? I spell my own name wrong on a regular basis, how can you be so sure of yourself?
Well, then came those blue erasers. The so-called pen erasers would help even those who are overconfident in their spelling abilities. In theory, they were supposed to remove the pen from your paper, or at least that's what we all thought.
Instead, we would be left with torn paper and illegible notes. I was always terrified of writing in pen, so I never had this issue, but my best friend always wanted to use her Bic colored pens that our teacher hated. Writing in pink ink is really not that legible, but it didn't stop her.
"I can erase it," she'd claim with a false sense of assurance before tearing through her sheet of lined paper. Well, guess who had to frantically copy my notes after the overhead projector was taken down?
Why were we all fooled by this? Why did we believe they were made to erase pens? Why did they even make that blue side of the eraser if it wasn't going to be any different?
Well, we've been fooled long enough. It's time to uncover the truth about the blue side of the eraser. It was apparently never intended to erase pens, but it's not just for regular pencils either...
As it turns out, we were WAY off. The blue part of the eraser had nothing to do with erasing pen.
The pink part is to erase pencil on regular paper, that part we know. It works pretty well most of the time, leaving hardly a mark.
But why we assumed that the blue erasers would erase pen is beyond me. As it turns out, that was never a thing, we were just crazy.
Instead, the blue parts of the eraser were still for pencil, but were made to be used on a heavier stock of paper. So they were ideal for your sketchpads and other thick pages that may not have worked as well with the softer erasers.
Sure, sometimes the blue side could successfully get the pen off of the paper, but if you press even slightly too hard it's going to go through your thin lined paper in a second. I don't know why they thought it was acceptable to market them as pen erasers, but they were kind of tricking us!
We've all been fooled by it, but at least now we know... I feel slightly cheated but I guess we just have to accept that pen is permanent.