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David Spates My name is Dave, I don't think I've ever bought a pen. As far as I can tell, pens just seem to be
part of the natural world. Like air, water and soil, pens simply
are a given on Earth. I don't know where all the pens come from,
but I don't know where all the rocks come from either. Some things
I just accept. A seemingly inexhaustible supply of disposable
pens is one of those things I just accept. Think about it. When was the last time you
really needed a pen and couldn't find one, no matter how much
you looked? Pretty quickly you'll have a pen in your hand. I
may not always have one right in front of me, but given a little
time and searching a pen is bound to present itself. And just as quickly and effortlessly as pens
come into my life, pens also disappear. I lose pens at the rate
of about 16 a day, and yet I've never been at a loss for something
to write with. As soon as the pen I'm using vanishes another
one stands at the ready, like candy from a Bugs Bunny Pez dispenser.
Just cock back the head and viola. Instant pen. If you want to know how frequently I lose
pens, consider this: I've had pens disappear from my fingers
while I was still using them. The words I was writing trail off
into nothingness, sucked into the black hole of pen infinity,
never to be seen from again. But no worries, mate. Mere seconds
after the last pen wriggled its way to sovereignty, a new one
appears and picks up where the cowardly last one left off. Now, of course, I'm kidding about all this
nonsense about pens being spontaneously generated by the Earth,
black holes that suck away the pens and Bugs Bunny Pez dispensers,
but I'm serious about never having purchased a pen. I don't think
I have. Pens have always been things that other people buy, not
me. I realize that makes me a pen-leech, but if that's my lot
in life, well, so be it. I can live with that. I'm not one of these people who will swipe
a pen from someone's desk. That's just crude. But nonetheless
I've always got a pen handy, and I know I haven't bought any
pens. Ergo, the pens I have must not be mine. They're someone
else's property. I wouldn't think of purloining your VCR, but
I sure don't seem to have any moral dilemma with horking your
pen. I wonder are disposable pens expensive?
I presume they're not since they're disposable, but since I've
never actually priced them, much less paid for them, I'm not
in a position to speak with certainty. Do you people who buy
disposable pens ever wonder where all your pens are? Consider
this: A disposable pen will write for a long time before it runs
out of ink. You could probably do all the writing you had to
do in a lifetime with 50 disposable pens. But because you lose
your pens or are the victim of parasites like me, you're forced
to purchase many more pens than you need. Meanwhile, I and other
pen freeloaders of the world skate through life without ever
having bought pens for ourselves. We feel bad about the injustice
of it all, really we do. Not enough to change our pen-poaching
ways, but we do feel bad. At this point in my life, I'm not sure I could convince myself to buy a pen. It would feel wrong somehow. For me, it would be like paying for the air I breathe or the sunshine on my face. I've ventured down a shameful path, and there's no turning back now. I've embraced the dark side of The Force, but, hey, there's free pens! |