Where do pencils go?

I think pencils are much like socks. You know the old problem of the dryer eating your socks. I think the dryer might also be eating my mechanical pencils. I just can’t figure out where they’re all going. I know I have about 10 of them but today I wasn’t able to find even one. The thing is, they seem to disappear one by one, only to reappear a while later one by one. So I’ll start with 10 on my desk and a few days later I’ll have none. Then lo and behold they start coming back and ending up on my desk. Where have they been? Were they on vacation or in the dryer? I try to be so organized about everything else, I can’t understand why I’m so disorganized about my pencils. If anyone knows of any good management techniques for dealing with errant pencils please let me know as I’ll build a whole training module on the subject. After all, I can’t be the only one having this problem.