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A famous advertising campaign once claimed that it's good to talk.
And that may be true.
But what's even better is typing.
Why, there are days when I can barely even stop typing.
I'm like a literal typing machine.
But what should I type?
And, for that matter, what should any of us type?
Therefore, feel free to make use of the comments section below, to begin that discussion.
And then, no doubt, shall our typing fingers begin to fly.
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14 comments:
PENS
Spider Robinson starts his story, 'The Blacksmith's Tale' (Analog Dec '85), with Jake Stonebender saying: “Once I bought a watch whose battery was rated for one year. The next time I gave it a thought was when it failed – four years later. Something familiar cannot be odd, until it stops.”
Later, Jake continues, “When that watch battery I mentioned earlier finally failed, I buried it in my backyard, respectful of its magnificent achievement.”
'What the hell's that got to do with pens?', you're thinking.
Well, strangely, it reminded me of a (fake?) metallic pen, my dad bought me, in the 80s, with a tiny digital clock display.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/6o8klr/the_digital_clock_pen_popular_in_the_mideighties/
Why that pen came to mind, with 'The Blacksmith's Tale', I don't know.
Anyway...
In my youth, pens figured prominently.
At Infant school, using jumbo marker pens (I forget the brand) my brother & myself drew tanks. The pens seriously smelled of solvent (or something!)
For handwriting, only pencils were permitted, until the top end of my junior school. Then, blue biros with a translucent top, a bit like a miniature bulb, were dished out to pupils. I pressed down very hard on exercise book pages with mine, when writing.
Starting high school, the school office sold stationery. For cheap biros, a pen called a 'Staedler stick' was sold to pupils.
The quintessential dirt cheap biro was the 'Bic Crystal'. It not only smudged, but 'blobbed' ( to quote my Chemistry teacher! )
Later, I got a Platignum fountain pen (from WHS), needing 2 ink cartridges, placed in the back.
My brother got a classier fountain pen, called an Osmiroid, with a 'bladder' at the back, which sucked up ink ( small, 'Quink' ink bottles, spring to mind! )
In the early 80s, roller-ball ink-pens became popular.
A green 80s roller-ball (called a 'Ball Pentel' ), Trevor Eve used for sketching, in the TV show, “Shoestring”. Never getting it in the 80s, I bought one in B&M, about 10 years ago. That's a pretty good run, for a pen!
Another was the Berol Handwriting Pen. In the 80s, I thought it looked cool. However, trying one as an adult, I thought it pretty rubbish.
A particularly classy looking 80s roller-ball was the Parker Vector. I'm not sure if I ever got one, or
just coveted it. Probably the latter.
My favourite 80s pen was probably Papermate's 'Erasermate'. Not the blue, high-end, expensive Papermate 'Replay', but its cheaper, disposable alternative. It was like a beige, papermate stickpen, with an eraser on the end! They were smudgy, but I loved mine!
I enjoyed drawing the superheroes I loved in comics, as a kid, despite my limited talents! With Christmas money (aged 10 or 11), I got 8 Pentel Color Brushes, in a folding pack. They were like mini paint brushes, but with ink in the back, not paint! Also, I got a pen & ink (I drew Ghostrider pics, with that! )
What other pens do I recall? What about those invisible writing pens? Or the spy-glass pens, advertised in US comics ( I never got one, but my brother said his was garbage) ?
Which pens evoke your childhood/teenage years?
This topic being too far down in geekdom's weeds, even for SDC, please accept my humble apologies!
Phillip
PHILLIP!
That is one obscure topic, lol.
I will say that when I started attending Catholic school in the fifth grade in 1971, our teacher Mr. Jenkins would require you to come and dip the end of your pen or pencil into a jar of Cod-Livet oil, and then put it in your mouth, if he caught you with your pen or pencil in your mouth.
I am not sure how I dodged that as I was a chronic wooden pencil cheerr, lol. And I especially enjoyed clamping down on the metal part that held the eraser and bending it out of shape.
And then there was my friend Benny, in the second grade, who had a cavity that created a perfect hole in the middle of his two front upper teeth where they met each other. Benny would entertain us boys by sticking his pen and pencil end Into the hole and spinning it around or wedging it in there and smiling so that the pen pencil was sticking out at you kind of like a cigarette, lol.
Who knew your subject would invoke such fun childhood memories?
Joe - Your teeth must be strong, deforming metal eraser holders like that! Either that, or you had a great dentist!
Phillip
The main thing is that you've managed to avoid the state pen, Charlie.
-sean
There was some sort of standard cartridge pen they sold in schools in my day that most people had. It was dark blue with a cap that you would screw off and attach to the other end of the pen when you were using it.
And the pen was a couple of inches longer than it needed to be. Two inches at the opposite end to the nib that served no purpose. You couldn’t even store a spare cartridge inside it.
But what you could do was to individualise your pen by melting that extra couple of inches in the flame of a bunsen burner and sculpting it into your own unique design.
dangermash - perhaps the vestigial two inches could have been used to secrete a piece of bubble gum - or a small eraser! Had someone forgotten, and bunsened the top, however, a sticky mess may have resulted!
Phillip
Phillip, thank you for the topic. Your pen experiences are remarkably in line with my own.
What I shall mention is those ballpoint pens that had multiple tubes in them, each containing a different coloured ink, so that you could change the colour you were writing in by pressing one of the handily placed buttons on the casing.
Phillip, what a strange coincidence - only yesterday I bought a Staedler stationary set which included two 'Staedler Sticks' (one black, one blue) and three pencils. I already have a full Bic biro so it was only the pencils I wanted, in order to replace my current WH Smith's pencil which I want to keep as a memento of that much-missed store.
I owned a fountain pen when I was about 12 and I considered them very classy at the time but I'm perfectly content with my humble Bic biro nowadays!
I well remember the day we were told to start writing with pens - it was the first day of the third year of Junior School in September 1975 and our new teacher Mr Christopher-Robin Bond announced the dramatic news that we must stop writing with pencils and he also said we must learn to do joined-up writing!
Q: Why was the ink-drop sad?
A: Because he was in the pen doing a long sentence
Phillip, I remember owning a large pack of multi-coloured felt-tip pens in my pre-teen childhood.
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