I like pens. Never much liked pencils. Too much maintenance and their erasers made a mess of things. I liked crossing out. A single line. Zip. Gone but not forgotten. Sort of like a graphic GPS – shows you where you’ve been and where you’re going. Besides, once I wrote the word down, if I decided to use it again, it was easily found.

And blue ink. Has to be blue ink. Not sure exactly why although thinking about it, before computers, we were told when we wrote in ink it had to be blue. And when I worked in advertising in print production, I was told that all signatures on the preprinted letters we sent out had to be in blue. Because it stood out. I still sign my letters in blue.

I do my crossword puzzles in pen. Yep, I’m one of those. But I do make mistakes. And just write over them. “A’s” become “O’s”, “B’s” become “U’s”. When things get really sloppy, I use correction tape. On my crossword puzzles. But just on the Sunday ones. The weekday ones are too easy. Like practice. The final is Sunday.

You can’t find blue pens much these days. Black, everything is black. And fine point. I don’t like fine point. I prefer medium and search the racks over and over looking for them. Sometimes there are packages of a dozen pens, black, green, red. But no blue. Why don’t they make blue pens anymore?

There’s a pen clipped to the pocket of every pair of pants I own. None are the ones with separate caps. I always lose the caps. And we know how dangerous an uncapped pen is. I come from the days of leaky stick pens. Great pools of blue that spread from the left breast of my shirts. The shirts were white. That’s what we had to wear.

The pens have to click. It’s power, it’s decision to click a pen. Here, let me read this first, holding the pen in the air. Then “click”, the decision is made. Almost like the tapping of the baton on the maestro’s podium. Anticipation. Preparation. Click.

I don’t have expensive pens. I did have one once. Was a gift from a business associate. It had a gold top with a green marbled bottom barrel. With a twist, the point revealed itself, snapping into place. I was in awe of this pen. I felt unworthy. I promptly lost it.

My pens are of the common variety and some even advertise. Bob’s Discount Tires. Seabreeze Nasal Rinse. Sometimes they even have names of companies I’ve made up. Other companies send me those pens asking me if they’d like me to buy more.

I’ll never be without a pen. I feel insecure without one. Wallet. Watch. Cellphone. Pen.

Ready for the day.

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