Back in my public school days, I wrote and doodled using a variety of ballpoint pens. I also really loved using fountain pens, and enjoyed the ritual of going to the local stationery store in Duncan, The Letterbox, and buying new ink cartridges for it. The idea of having and keeping a pen instead of just throwing it away when the ink ran out seemed a good one back in the ecologically-aware 1970s.
Alas, fountain pens and left-handed writing do not go great together, so some of my output would get a bit smeary. I adapted and bought faster-drying inks, while also learning to slow my writing, to further let the ink dry before my left hand would smoosh all across everything I’d just written.
Most of my writing with fountain pens was cursive, as the flow of ink from the nib just seemed to lend itself to that. But around grade six or so, I gave up on cursive (mine was fine) and went to printing everything. It was slower, but I enjoyed it more, and modesty aside, I had really nice printing. I even started doing fancy a’s.
Occasionally, I wanted to use different colours of ink to better emphasize certain words or phrases, and this is when I discovered the Bic four-colour pen, which offered:
- Black
- Blue
- Green
- Red
All in the same pen!
It was great. I loved it and kept buying them for years, until I finally just started typing out everything on computers instead.
But a few weeks ago I saw one in the stationery aisle of a drugstore and I had to buy it. And I did!
I still don’t have much need to write things by hand, but I do keep a notepad by my keyboard, and this pen sits next to it, ready to jot down things in four different colours. Sometimes I just click through the colours, like it’s secretly a fidget toy. Maybe it is a fidget toy.
I’m just glad to have one again. I am easily pleased, sometimes.