A Memory of Pens

Image: Pixabay

When I was a little girl, I had a magical pen. I could just click the buttons to choose between black, blue, green, or red ink. This fat, clunky thing was no kind of expensive writing instrument, but it's the pen I remember the most fondly.

It was a note-taking, story-writing, doodle-mastering magic wand of sorts. I wrote stories of adventures on wide-lined school paper, and I illustrated them. It hardly mattered at all if I couldn't spell all the words because my penmanship was probably almost indecipherable anyway.

I also acquired a a fine pen that came in the box for winning a speech competition in 4-H. The entire pen was covered in some kind of gold-covered plating, and I thought it was fine. See, I was going to grow up to become an astronaut/author/politician/all-around guru, and I would need a nice pen for that!

My mother actually taught me to type on her old typewrite that did not even need electricity. It was a noisy, stuck-keyed sort of machine that actually required some grace and skill to use. In her hands, it was faster than a pen; in my hands, not so much.

These days, I struggle to find a cheap pen in the bottom of my cluttered purse. I write with keys that click but never stick, I swipe my phone, I speak into a microphone.

I mostly abandoned pens, but I remember pens. My children barely grew up to know the struggle and the magic.

Freewrite Challenge: Pen (A Memory of Pens)

A Memory of Pens