Feb 2, 2018 3 min read

I live in a house that gobbles pens and pencils, and drive a car that does the same. At least four times a week, I can be seen wandering from room to room, opening drawers and chanting my mantra:

“A writer lives here and not a pen to be found.”

I do buy them. My every trip to Target may be inspired by the need for toothpaste or bottled water, but you can’t get to those aisles without passing by the stationery department. I always divert and toss three packs of roller-ball pens into the cart.

At home, I crack them open and pull out whole handfuls of them. Where they go after that is a mystery.

With bill paying and correspondence and actual, paid writing done on the computer, ink pens have become analog. One reliable pen is all I need.

Drawers are problematic. Even the designated ones eventually become junk drawers, and I think you can picture those. Last week, on a pen search, I dove into the one on the kitchen island and unearthed a decades-old red Twizzler, but no pens. I gobbled the licorice out of frustration.

My purse would be another likely place. I’ve been upgrading my handbag game lately, ditching the $35 floppy ones for something more in the hundred-dollar family. That price point gets you a rigid, bucket-like bag that doesn’t squirm around as much when you go fishing.

There were no pens in there, either.

A few times a week, I meet with an executive producer at the TV station, sitting across the desk from him. And I’m distracted by all the pens. Decorative cups are stuffed full of them, their tips poking up like candles on an old person’s birthday cake. That’s what I want at my desk: a mug stuffed with roller-ball pens. (It would be even nicer if the mug read “Best Mom in the Universe” or, less likely, “Powerball Jackpot Winner 2017.”)

Pens must be among the most pilfered items on the planet. The other day a really juicy pen arrived with the check at a Mexican restaurant, and let me tell you, I was tempted. Signing the check was almost a pleasure.

I like pens that write a thick, loopy line. Occasionally, I’ll find red pens like that, perfect for grading the papers of my writing students. But even those disappear.

When my daughter was a baby, she relied on her pacifier. After a long car trip made almost unbearably noisy because we couldn’t find her pacifier, I bought a dozen, all of which disappeared. Whoever cleaned out that car when we traded it in probably found a gross of binkies.

Likewise, if someone were to turn this house upside down and shake it, a hundred pens would fall out.

Our culture makes fun of nerdy men with pocket protectors and a row of pens in their shirts, but they’ve got it right.

This morning, I almost wrote a check to the cable company using a green crayon. After a search, I found a cheap old ballpoint inscribed with the name of a restaurant. It was in the top drawer of my office desk, of all places. Go figure.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.