A few months ago, my friend Rachel, who lives in Washington,
happened to mention in her e-mail that she couldn’t stop buying ink pens. She
said she had drawers stuffed to capacity with them, yet for some reason, she
still couldn’t resist buying more and more…even though she rarely uses them or
needs them any more.
I read her e-mail with stunned disbelief and felt my pulse
quicken. Was it truly possible, I wondered, that someone else shared my secret
addiction?
The truth is, I have been a closet pen-addict for years. I’m
not talking about collecting pens that are souvenirs from places I’ve visited
or pens that have witty sayings or business names on them. I’m talking about
buying every and any pen imaginable in all colors, shapes and point sizes. I
have so many pens, if I glued them together I probably could construct a
life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower.
I still remember the first pen I ever really got excited
about, back when I was in grammar school. It was a Lindy ballpoint and it was
unlike any other ballpoint I’d seen. It was a long, slender stick-type pen,
with no button to click, and best of all, its ink came in eye-catching colors
like purple, turquoise and even gold. The pens were 39 cents each, which was
pretty steep for a pen back then, but I gave up my usual pound of penny candy
every week just so I could afford a new Lindy or two.
That should have tipped me off right then that I was on the
road to becoming a hardcore pen addict.
The sad part was that my teachers didn’t even let me use my
brightly colored pens on my schoolwork. They wanted boring black or blue ink,
not bright pink or turquoise. So my precious Lindy pens eventually dried up
from lack of use. That’s when one of my friends told me that if you held a
ballpoint pen over a flame, the ink would become un-dried and start flowing
again. Excited, I turned on the burner on the gas stove and thrust one of my
pens into the flame.
That was the day I learned that melted plastic really
stinks…and has to be chiseled off the stove when it hardens (and that Lindy
pens don’t look quite so stylish when they’re warped into a “U” shape).
In the early 1960s, I once again experienced pen-induced
excitement. That was when Flair introduced the first felt-tipped writing pens.
I was in awe. These pens didn’t skip or leave ink blobs on the paper the way
ballpoint pens did. And they produced a bold, smooth line, unlike the
ballpoint’s scrawny little one. Best of all, they came in a rainbow of bright
colors that made the Lindy’s colors pale in comparison.
I spent all of my allowances on Flair pens. I used them to
decorate my book covers, my pocketbook, my sneakers…and my arms, with
tattoo-like artwork that required Lava soap and a Brillo pad to remove.
Alas, I soon discovered that leaving the cap off a Flair pen
overnight rendered it completely useless. I also discovered that if you tried
the pen-heating method with a Flair and held it over a flame, the felt tip turned
into a miniature blowtorch.
I bought every novelty pen that was introduced over the
years: the bracelet pen, the glitter-ink pen, the flashlight pen, and even one
that wrote in invisible ink and required a “magic” developer to make the
writing appear.
I thought that the invisible-ink pen was the answer to my
prayers because it meant I’d finally be able to write notes in school and if
the teacher caught me passing one, she wouldn’t be able to read it. But writing
with invisible ink wasn’t easy. I couldn’t tell where one sentence left off or
the next one was supposed to begin, so my sentences usually ended up going
uphill or criss-crossing each other.
“Your mother got spayed and your cat is going to drive us to
the movies on Saturday?” one of my friends asked after she’d used the developer
on one of my invisible-ink notes.
My days of passing invisible-ink notes came to an abrupt
end, however, when the teacher finally caught on to what we kids were doing and
bought herself one of the magic developers.
My pen addiction grew only worse when I reached adulthood,
mainly because I had more money. There were Rollerball pens, gel pens and pens
that contained erasable ink. There were rubberized pens for easy gripping and
permanent marking pens that wrote on everything from clothing to glass. There
were pens with pale pastel ink that showed up only on black paper, so I bought a
ream of black paper (which I barely used because my friends accused me of
trying to ruin their eyesight).
It got to the point where I couldn’t walk through the
stationery department in a store without hyperventilating and reaching for the pens.
But back then, I had a lot of “pen” pals, so pens were a necessity. I enjoyed
buying decorated stationery and then the ink colors to match. If the paper had
red roses on the border, I’d write with red ink. If it had violets, I wrote in
purple. Color-coordination was very important to me at that time.
My latest acquisition is a pen that flashes colored lights
as it’s being used. When I press the tip to paper, it activates the lights
inside. It looks like a miniature disco stuffed into a pen…and it makes my
eyeballs throb whenever I try to write with it.
I hate to admit it, but hidden in the back of my closet is a
plastic trash bag filled with hundreds of pens I’ve bought over the years. I’m
sure that the ink in most of them has turned into powder, it’s so old, but I
don’t have enough time or energy (or paper) to sit down and test every pen to
see which ones still write and which should be given a proper burial.
Meanwhile, the other day I saw a great sale advertised for
Pilot extra-fine premium-gel pens, and my heartbeat immediately quickened. I’m
definitely going to go stock up on them. It doesn’t even matter if the only
time I’ll use them is when I write out the occasional check or birthday
card. I still want them.
But heck, I guess I always can use a few more pens to
complete my replica of the Eiffel Tower …or I suppose I can send them to my
friend Rachel for Christmas.
# #
#
Sally Breslin is an award-winning humor columnist and the
author of “There’s a Tick in my Underwear!” “Heed the Predictor” and “The
Common-Sense Approach to Dream Interpretation." Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
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