Black ballpoint pens are my favorite type of pen. Other pens’ ink is smoother and their formulations are cleaner, but using them makes me self-conscious. Their sharpness constricts me, as though I am in formal wear. I do not want to be held to such expectations.
My pens are jammed into mugs on my desk. They camouflage themselves amidst markers, pencils and scissors. Peripherally, I monitor my pen supply: How is it doing? Is my stock dwindling? Have I passed the threshold prompting me to buy more pens? It is not as necessary to monitor a stock of ballpoint pens as it is to track toilet paper or dish soap, but it’s something I like to keep tabs on just the same.
I prefer black ink to blue. What is the purpose of blue ink? Black/white is the strongest visual contrast available to the human eye. I have never read a book printed in blue. Does an author think, “I’d like my writing to appear on the page, but a little less distinctly than it otherwise would?”
At work, I had been using the same pen for months when a co-worker noticed that it had the name of his church on it. There it was — white text on red plastic — proof that the pen was his and not mine. Inscribing pens is a clever way to keep track of them. In fact, since a lot of my pens are unaffiliated, it might be worth my while to mark them in some way. Corporations know how valuable pens are and stake their claim on them. The more pens an organization has, I think, the more powerful the organization.
Some pens are stuck in relationships against their wills. Separated from kin, they are chained to clipboards at doctors’ offices. If you take me, they cry, you’re going to have to take the whole clipboard. Layers of suffocating packaging tape bind them to their chains. The charge for the doctor visit comes to $731.65 — not revealed to me the day of the visit, of course. (I am informed that the business office is not connected to the medical office.) But no matter how high or arbitrary my bill, one thing is clear: I am not to take the 15-cent pen with me.
In a nearby waiting room are pens wrapped in green floral tape and sprouting pink silk flowers. Those pens are undergoing an identity crisis: perennials without roots. Their stems are stuck in a flowerpot of blue marbles. They are plucked and replanted again and again, clinking the marbles into new formations. Their large, bright petals don’t deceive me. For all their cheery hues, I know the real purpose of those petals — it’s the same as the chains: You can pick this flower, but you can’t take it with you.
I do not fully appreciate the value of a pen until someone else borrows it. It’s not like a decorative tray that I’m OK loaning out for a month or so. When I let someone borrow a pen, I create a map in my mind of where it is, I track how far it is from me at various points in time, I anticipate its return. When my co-worker places it back on my desk, I express my pleasure with exaggerated gratitude. “Oh, thank you so much for returning my pen,” I proclaim, loudly enough so that people in nearby cubicles can hear me. I want to reinforce the moral, for the public’s edification, that borrowed pens are meant to be returned.
A pen is a thoughtful gift. It points toward worlds yet untouched. It travels to places yet unseen. It welcomes thoughts yet unthought. Unlike most consumable gifts, a pen does not dwindle to nothingness; it expands into something more. It is less like the gift of a scarf and more like that of a ball of yarn; it has unforeseen possibilities. I’ll take the gift of a pen any day. Give me a black ballpoint, uncapped. Better yet, let me rescue one that has rolled into a dusty corner of the room where it risks being swept out with the trash. Then I will receive a double joy: watching its ink-flow return in squiggles on my paper, and feeling that I am giving it a second chance.
Erin Buckley is an occupational therapist and writer who lives in Richmond, Virginia.