I always carry a pen.  Always.  OK, not in the shower.  Well, not on the golf course either, but then I have a pencil. My pen is on the bedside table, though there may not be paper there.  But otherwise, always.

Some people call them ink pens, which I always thought was redundant.  But maybe they feel the need to distinguish their pen from the one that encloses pigs or prisoners.

When I was sixteen, my parents gave me a gold Cross pen.  It was the first good pen I ever had and I still have it.  I carried it in my shirt for more than twenty years.  In my shirt, but not in my shirt pocket.  I put my pen in the placket of my shirt, between the second and third buttons.  I never put it in the pocket.  When I used to wear ties, the tie would cover up the pen.  On one of our trips to Thailand, I had dress shirts made for myself, and I had them made without a pocket.

One day when I lived in Portland Oregon I was running across the street in the rain and the pen fell out of my shirt and I stepped on it.  I didn’t know it had fallen, but I felt it when I stepped on it.  Crushed it pretty badly and it wouldn’t turn to retract or extend the point of the pen.

Fortunately, when I was best man at a friend’s wedding he had given me a Parker pen and pencil set with my name engraved on the barrels.  So I replaced the Cross with the pen from the set.  Never really used the pencil.  I carried that pen for several years until one day I dropped it in the car and it wedged into that little crevice between the driver’s seat and the console, next to the railings that move the seat back and forth.  It’s impossible for me to get my fingers down there and still keep them attached to my hand.  I tried lying on the floor in the back seat and reaching under the seat and I could touch the pen but I couldn’t move it.  So I took a coat hanger and went fishing for it.  I got the pen out but managed to scratch up the finish of the pen pretty badly.

Since it was as much a keepsake as it was a pen I put it in the drawer so it wouldn’t get any more scarred than it already was, and I bought a Waterman pen.

I carried this pen until about a year ago when it simply disappeared one day.  It wasn’t on the dresser, the bedside table or in my shirt.  Those are the only places a pen belongs and it wasn’t in any of them.  After I looked where it should have been, I looked where it should not have been; one or two of which I should not have been either.  It was nowhere to be found.

I was a little upset, but I was more angry than anything.  Obviously I don’t lose things.  I particularly do not lose pens.  But I couldn’t find it and I had to have a pen so I bought another Parker.

Then one day Cheryl took the grill off the front of the refrigerator to vacuum the lint out from in under it, and out came my Waterman pen.  A little dusty but none the worse for the experience.  

So now I have them all; the four pens of my life.  At least the past forty-four years of my life – and counting.

You might think that since I always have a pen that I do a lot of writing.  Aside from taking notes on phone conversations and signing birthday cards and credit card receipts, I probably don’t use a pen for much.  I don’t remember the last time I used my pen to write a letter.  I learned to compose my thoughts at the typewriter when I was in journalism school and have been writing at a keyboard ever since.

And I imagine the pen’s days are numbered.  It will go the way of the typewriter, the slide rule, 45’s, film and VHS tape; replaced by the iSomething.

It is increasingly difficult to find refills for my pen.  Drug store clerks look at you quizzically if you ask for a pen refill.  Even some stationery stores don’t carry them though you would think that if anyone had a vested interest in selling ink it would be the store that sells paper.

Which makes me wonder how much longer the ink supply can last anyway?  I suspect there will come a day when it’s just not economical to drill for ink any more.  When it was just us pen users who needed ink the supply seemed endless.  But then came the typewriter, printing press, adding machine and now every house probably has a printer next to its computer.  That’s an enormous amount of ink coming out of the ground.

When they sink an ink drill into the ground the first ink to come up is red. It is closest to the surface. But since it is only used by teachers and accountants there is not much demand for red ink so the drillers usually press on.  No one is exactly sure why ink changes color deeper into the earth, though it’s obvious that it does.  Soon, the ink turns dark blue.  There is a gigantic pool of blue ink.

Deeper still is the black ink. It is the oldest ink and the most difficult to bring to the surface. And it is used for just about everything.  I use black ink in my pen.  Always have.

I’ve had people try to tell me that you can’t drill for ink, but those people have obviously never heard of an ink well.