Pens

I like pens. I cannot begin to tell you why, but for most of my life pens and pencils have had some special attachment to me. As a nerdy young middle schooler, my friends and I kept a mechanical pencil collection. That's right... not something interesting or unique like Baseball cards or Coins or Comic Books (which I did collect all three at one point) but pencils. I had a special pencil box with all different types of refillable lead, erasers, grips, anything you can possibly think of that had to do with pencils (and I seriously hope you can't think of more than that!). We would trade them amongst each other, trade other people for their pencils, brag to one another how cool our pencils were... and now it has moved on to pens. Adulthood does have its perks!

I worked as a bag-boy at the local Big Bear when I was 16. We carried a pen in our pocket for marking... something, I don't remember what, but that was my first Work pen. And it was AWESOME. It became a part of my uniform: Red Shirt, Name Tag, and Pen. Carried it everywhere, nothing made me happier than to see someone needing to write something and being able to whip out my trusty pen to save the day!

I had a brief love affair with Gel Pens. I remember seeing someone writing in awesome block printing, and I was like OH MY GOD I HAVE TO HAVE THAT. And OH, was it nice! No scratching back and forth, over and over to try and get a line or free up that crusty bit that gets stuck in the ball... just smooth, thick lines, every time. After awhile though, those smooth, thick lines began to smudge with the slightest brush of my hand across the page. Now I had excellent block printing with black wings at the end of every letter.

I moved on to clear BIC ballpoints. Very simple pens, very cheap, but very high quality as well. Works best when working on a pad of paper or a crossword book... something with padding underneath, rather than writing directly on a hard surface like a table. I filled up many, MANY notebooks with scribbles and stories and card game score keeping with one of these babies... and the best part, is they are slim enough to fit into the spirals on a notebook, so they are never lost!

While I no longer carry a pen (or a totally rad pencil case), I'm always extremely covetous of the pens that are at my desk at work; I keep track of my pen like Scrooge McDuck. I use one pen until it cannot write no more (or someone swipes it... bastards) and while I don't have a specific preference anymore, I still find myself finding one pen, or style of pen, and hoarding them from all others because I like the way that brand of pen writes.

After writing all of this, its really strange the odd things that form attachments to our daily lives... that, or I'm just really strange.

Thanks!

NIK