An unordinary pen that becomes extraordinary
GUEST COLUMNIST | By Laurie Farrington
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(May 24, 2016) - Recently, I was asked to describe the pen I use to write with. Well, that was not as hard as it first seemed. All I had to do was tell the truth. The truth is that the pen I write with is the one that is easiest to access when I want to write something. That would be any pen that works when I put it to paper. It could be in a drawer in the kitchen, one by my bedside, or one in my purse or in my desk drawer. So I’ve got this cream-colored and orange with blue accents pen right by my arm at this very moment. It is an advertising pen that I picked up somewhere. It has FEDERATED printed on it and a logo that says CAR CARE professionals.
Holding this pen in my hand got me to thinking about all the pens I have that are allegedly “special.” They are stashed away somewhere and have become artifacts in my museum of “important things.” Those pens are the ones that people who wanted to encourage my writing career did so by giving me a “special” pen. The first such special pen came from my supervisor who taught me to transcribe medical dictation at the Orthopedic Center in Springfield, Illinois, which I did for thirty years while I was dreaming of writing the all-American novel. Following that, a couple of other friends have given me also “special pens.” I even have a feather pen that is to be dipped in ink in order to write with it. My granddaughter is fascinated by that pen. I hope she gets it when I am “out of here,” so to speak.
I do know that ordinary pens sure do come in handy when I want to jot something down real quick. Other people must feel that way too. I can still hear my son saying, “Who takes the pens out of
‘my’ drawer?” That would be the drawer in the kitchen where he keeps a hammer and a pair of pliers, rubber bands, twisters, and a screwdriver. It’s hard to understand that that is “his” drawer. In my home (when I had one of my own), that kind of drawer was called “the junk drawer” because it held a hodge-podge of odds and ends. This particular drawer my son talks about is below the cabinet where he keeps his vitamins and special nuts (cashews) that he squirrels away, so he calls it “his” drawer. His complaint is that he keeps putting pens in there and then they are gone when he wants one. I put pens in there too, and I often find them “gone.” This situation has a moral, I presume, and that would be that “You can’t have too many ordinary pens hanging around your house.”
So much for the museum of “special” pens. They are worthless except maybe to ego, which gets old fast, for you can’t use something that is in a museum; that’s for eye candy only to tourists from foreign countries, i.e., anyone who is not a writer like me or a head-of-household like my son is. | | | | | |
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