Pen preferences

I was going to just comment then thought I’d write a post pointing back over to Quasifictional who today talks about her affection for fountain pens.

H.o.p. will only use Sanford Uniball fine pens. I actually settled on the Uniball many years ago, before H.o.p. was born, when I sometimes still wrote with a pen, and for the past several years H.o.p. will draw with nothing but. And there’s a reason I settled on the Stanford Uniball fine. It flows fairly well, doesn’t feel scratchy, and produces a nice line. I loathe scratchy feeling pens or pens that drag or pens that feel too lightweight or too heavy. No…I shouldn’t say I loathe them. Instead it’s a kind of visceral revulsion. Writing with Bics and really cheap freebie type give-away pens is kin to scraping lightly on a chalkboard with one’s fingernails.

But I rarely write with a pen any longer. In fact, many documents I have to sign at home I frequently have the option of signing with my Wacom tablet and emailing them. And I do it. I like it.

I become confused when people stick strange pens in my hand so H.o.p.’s insistence that he can only use one pen comes honestly. I always feel bizarre picking up a strange, cheap, ballpoint pen and most places that’s all they have for signing forms. I feel just plain odd handling a strange pen. I’m just extra sensitive that way (I’m extra sensitive in a lot of ways but we needn’t go there today). Anyway, today at the dental office, after my cleaning (I listened to my iPod the entire time and pretended I was sometimes in a Stanley Kubrick movie and sometimes in a David Lynch film…yes…that’s how I get through things like this in a calm and cool manner), I’m leaving and not feeling disoriented, am in fact feeling quite relieved (any appointment with any kind of specialist or authority, or anything to do with any level of government, really just any appointment in general where anything about me is placed under scrutiny in any manner whatsoever makes me feel like I’m going to die) when they call me back to the receptionist’s window (after telling me to go on as the computers are down and they’ll have to bill me) and hand me a postcard to address which will be sent in six months so I’ll know to schedule another appointment (which will only be done because of H.o.p.) and hand me a very strange pen. It’s not the same pen they handed me for a signature when I earlier entered. I looked at this pen hard and where the writing tip obviously should have been, there simply wasn’t. They kept telling me to take off the cap and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the cap was. Finally, I threw up my hands in frustration and laughed about how I use a computer, that’s what I do, and pens only confuse me now. And they politely showed me how to uncap the pen. As Marty says, it was like a goddamn camouflage pen because he too tried to figure out where the cap was and the writing tip was and couldn’t.

Several times in my life I have tried to become attached to a fountain pen but it never works. I feel as if I should like them but I don’t. I usually put the pen away long enough that the refill dries out before I use it again and I think, “I should buy refills and use this pen because it seems more eco friendly”, but I never do.

Plus, many years ago for a brief while I worked in an office supply store that prided itself on its fountain pens and that left me with an acute distaste. They said they had people come from Japan to check out their amazing selection of fountain pens–and they did! Japanese tourists would trek in and head directly to the fountain pen section. The people who owned the store (uber-conservative) were so damn obsessed with fountain pens that the fountain pen area of the store was as quiet as a church. Reverential awe was demanded. They should have had kneelers. Only one employee was permitted within ten lengths (of what I don’t know, but lengths because it sounds good) of the fountain pen area. She was the expert on fountain pens and had worked there for years, and when she was ill the store would go into a panic. She had even learned a bit of Japanese in order to be able to converse with the Japanese tourists.

She had health insurance coverage. That’s how high up the food chain this employee was. And she was nice, I liked her well enough, but as she passed through the store a deferential hush would fall, she gently smiling as she floated upon waves of grace to the fountain pen counters. Still, the privileged care with which she handled the pens seemed less for love of the pens than a discreet determination to instill such awe in her specialized knowledge that no other employee might be considered worthy of even apprenticing in pens, thus preserving the exclusivity of her position, and her health insurance coverage.

It was amazing to me that fountain pens were so….involved. I was under the impression you could work at the store for eight years and still not be considered worthy of apprenticing in fountain pens. Ten years, maybe. But no less.

The woman who got me the job at that store (they were her friends) acted as though I should bow in humble thanks the remainder of my life. Because not only were they the grand cathedral of fountain pens, they were the holy empire of D-ring notebooks and expensive leather day planners. When I worked at the office supply store it was the expensive leather day planner that was a respected offensive weapon in the trump-you social status arsenal, and this woman loved their day planners.

Isn’t it interesting that the realm of pen and paper, considered such a democratic medium, can be so elitist?

I hated that damn store. It made me feel suicidal. Life makes me feel suicidal so that’s nothing new. But there are places in this world that are extra special secret gates to infernal fiery lakes of the damned, grottoes of existential hopelessness, and that store was one of them.