The Pen is Still Mighty

Today, I needed a pen and reached for a very specific one from the box on my desk. I wanted to experience the same joy in manually creating the words on paper as I had the last time.

That last time I needed a pen, to write a check, was about a month ago. By sheer good fortune, I picked out an old Pilot G-2 instead of one of the many Bic ballpoints I have somehow collected. As soon as I put that Pilot to paper, I felt a little thrill of a long-ago memory of ink flowing smoothly onto paper, commanded by the muscle memory in my left hand. I didn’t just write with it, I crafted the letters and numbers.

It had been sooo long since I had used this pen that I had forgotten the pleasure that this modestly priced device could bring. Today, I remembered, and wanted to experience it again.

My daughter, I discovered some years ago, shares my fondness for a smooth-operating pen. Way back when the Pilot was what I used regularly, she happened to use it and commented on how it glided on the paper. Pens became, for a short time, a common passion, and it wasn’t long before she introduced me to the Uni•Ball Vision Elite. Where the Pilot felt a little workman-like, the Uni felt a bit more refined in the hand.

Sadly, most of my writing has been done on the keyboard or an iPad for much of the last five or so years. I save a lot of paper that way.

On the bright side, though, I never used up those pens, so not only do I still have not one but two Pilots, I also have that Uni•Ball. And also the one that started it all for me, at least in my memory — the Pilot Precise V5, extra fine.

Writing checks never felt so good.