Penned Down |
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| She watched his hand move
across the page...scribble, pause, scribble, pause, scribble, underline. The ink flowed
smoothly from the Hi-Line Ultra-Fine Point Super Rolling Ball Pen with Rubberized Grip for
Comfort he held in his right hand. Her Hi-Line Ultra-Fine Point Super Rolling Ball
Pen. She looked at his page of geography notes--the gracefully arcing curves hanging off
his 'y's and 'g's, the smooth black outline of New Zealand's coastline contrasting
beautifully against his white paper. She looked at her own page of notes, with its choppy
letters and broad, faint lines produced by nubby pencil lead. When he'd borrowed her pen
two days ago, she had never expected it to go this far. She had been busily scratching away at the midterm that fateful day, using her Hi-Line NeverFail 0.5 mm AutoLead Pencil (which broke later that day) only because the finality of ink on exams was too stressful. She found she worked better when she knew she could go back and change things. She was in the middle of a question on rock formations in Australia when he nudged her shoulder. "Can I borrow a pen?" he whispered. "Mine's not working." Grudgingly, she rummaged in her bookbag with her left hand as she continued writing with her right. "Here," she muttered, and flicked a pen over her shoulder at him. She thought it was the Bic that glopped ink anyway. An hour later, as her marketing class started, she realized the truth: it had been her Hi-Line Ultra-Fine Point Super Rolling Ball Pen. To calm herself, she silently repeated, "I'll see him Thursday and get it back. I'll see him Thursday and get it back." Her notes from that day's marketing class were full of ink blobs. The day after she'd loaned her pen, the Bic glopped its last and she'd had to resort to using a cheap ballpoint click pen emblazoned with the DisasterPro Insurance logo ("When it just can't get any worse, look to us"). Her notes looked like hell. She plotted her strategy. She showed up early for Thursday's geography class and sat right next to him. Immediately before class started, she rummaged through her bookbag's outside pocket. "Oh, dear," she announced in his direction, "I don't have a pen." He was facing away from her, talking to someone. "Does anybody have a PEN?" she growled at his back, her teeth clenched. He still ignored her. So much for subtlety. "Here, you can keep it." A dull No. 2 pencil was shoved into her hand by the nerdy guy sitting on her other side. She looked at him, ready to give it back, but the bell rang and the professor immediately began his lecture. She watched, seething, as the guy used her pen to swiftly note New Zealand's major ports, to effortlessly list its major agricultural products. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him cross his 't's with a slash, underline important words with wavy lines, and...OH MY GOD HE PUT IT IN HIS MOUTH! She stared with horror now, completely oblivious to the lecture, to her notes, to his notes, as he gently bit the lid with his incisors, then returned to writing. Moments later, her pen was back at his mouth, only now he had his lip stretched back at the side and was chewing it with his molars. She thought she was going to be sick. By the end of the class, she was ready to drive her new No. 2 pencil straight through his heart. But instead, she stood up and jumped in front of him immediately after the bell rang. "Um, can I have my pen back?" He looked up at her, somewhat surprised. "Oh, sure," he said, handing it to her. "Thanks." He nonchalantly threw his notebook into his bookbag and left her standing there, inspecting the pen. That night she sat at her desk, the bulb of her desklamp posed inches above her hands as she filed his teeth marks off the lid with a succession of emery boards. It wasn't so bad, she decided, inspecting it carefully in the light when she had worn the last of her emery boards smooth. The pen lid wasn't shiny anymore, was in fact pretty rough in places, but it had a certain artsy look to it now. Waiting for the beginning of history class the next day, she wrote the date in the margin of her notebook with a flourish, relishing the sensation in her fingers as the pen glided over the page. She found herself doodling a few lines down the side of the paper, drawing circles for the pure joy of it. When the professor began to speak, she began to transcribe his lecture, word for word. Or, at least, the first nine words. Until her Hi-Line Ultra-Fine Point Super Rolling Ball Pen with Rubberized Grip for Comfort ran out of ink. |
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| Copyright ©1995 by Joy Woller (jwoller@cs.cornell.edu) |