Can I borrow a pen?
There seem to be two kinds of people. Those who accumulate pens, and those who disappear them.
The first type, have drawers and drawers of pens that procreate in the wee hours of the night, such that they never EVER need to buy a pen in their lifetimes. They’re the ones at work that always have bulging coffee mugs packed to capacity with pens from sixty different companies. They hand out pens like lollipops in the doctor’s office, yet, like Everlasting Gobstoppers, they seem to have an inexhaustible supply.
The second type have drawers and drawers without pens, and no matter how hard they try, can’t keep a pen handy for their life. It doesn’t matter how many pens they buy, they slowly vanish into that void that is also reserved for socks, Tupperware lids and absolutely critical Lego pieces. Or perhaps they migrate via Star Trek sub-space to the drawers of pen accumulators. These people’s coffee mugs at work contain exactly two writing implements. One is a pen without a cap (stolen from the desk of the pen accumulator) and the other is a pencil with a broken lead.
Personally, I’m a cross between the two types. At home, I’m seriously pen deficient. I have to carefully hide a couple of pens as my private reserve, and swear under penalty of death to ALWAYS put them back when I’m done, or they will vanish from sight when I take my eyes off them for even a moment. It doesn’t matter that we have a monthly pen budget and buy our writing implements in bulk at CostCo. They disappear faster than Milk.
But at work, I have managed to keep the pen-vanishing gnomes in check using various forms of psychological warfare. I have disguised my pens and pencils with strings and bands and wires. I cover them in tape and feathers, extremely silly erasers, or bright paint. I laminate notes around them that say things like, “Steal me and DIE,” or “You now have strep.” I even went so far as to get pens shaped like rubber fish or with violently pink Hello Kitty tops. And today, I am proud to say, my coffee mug is comfortably full.
Now if I can just find a way to keep my Post-It notes out of the void, I’ll be set… (more…)