WHITING: Death of a Pen: A Comic Sans

I am alone in the library on a Friday afternoon and my pen just died. It’s really sad — you have to understand. It was my only one. I knew I’d be spending today on the third floor of Mugar, and for whatever absurd reason, I only brought one pen and one highlighter — and anyway, it’s a knock-off highlighter because it’s really just an old yellow marker from a Crayola 50-pack, and everyone knows you can’t take notes with a fake Crayola highlighter. That’s so nonacademic. Transparent yellow marginalia is amateur and useless. And it’s bad for your eyes.

I’ve searched — three times — the bottom of my bag; I’ve tried my pockets. I’ve checked the floor, I’ve scanned my BUID – there is no “Dead Pen Emergency” alert number on the back of it. Worthless plastic. I’ve been eyeing my donnish neighbors for signs of ink surplus. Do they not see me staring? If these students were at all observant, they’d approach me, extend a hand holding a pen and say, “It looks an awful lot like you need this.” Right now that would restore all of my faith in human kindness (and human penmanship), but, alas, no such occurrence. I’m helpless. Pen-less.

Cue slight onset of despair, mildly visual panic. This is totally cramping my style. I was almost on a roll analyzing Michael Polanyi and I’m only halfway through my JO703 readings. Also I’m supposed to underline good and memorable and relatable lines in Stephen Akey’s “College: A Memoir” for EN512 and the highlighter thing totally is not going to do.

Wait, there could be hope. I notice a wooden podium by the pillar to my left. Two golden pens attach to it. Super retro. They were probably installed when Mugar opened back in 1966, so they probably don’t work. Nope, just checked; they’ve got enough pre-historic ink in them to suffice for a lightly jotted call number, or phone number, or whatever people could possibly need a podium with non-removable pens for these days, but I was unsuccessful in my attempt to slyly rip the faux gold metal cord that attaches them to their base, and I’m not about to be that loser who studies standing up.

I’m paralyzed, incapable. I cradle my dead pen. I begin to understand loss. I admire the slender and economic build, the faded gray “Whiting Clinic” logo in its middle. I wonder if it missed home. I feel bad about breaking its pocket-holder-thing. I wonder if it hurt.

This post-traumatic pen-less stress is making me crazy. Mr. Pen’s all of a sudden taking on a sort of mythopoeic existence i.e. once he was just a few little pieces on a production line; he sometimes inked himself. His journey into penhood was somewhat long and difficult. He left the factory, made pen friends, got a job at my dad’s clinic, got endorsement, earned a place at the boss’ desk, fell in love with a promotional ballpoint sweetheart, adopted other small little pencils. He took my job offer in Boston and was there for me through many a discussion about Oscar Wilde’s art criticism and the diction of Katherine Boo’s journalism … and then just died in his favorite owner’s hands. You can’t just do that to me, man.

Should I bury him? And if so, where — outside Mugar? In the rat-infested greens of Bay State Road? Where it came from, in the garden of an office building off Louisiana Avenue along Minnesota Interstate Highway 394?

I reach out for support via text message. “You guys, I’m all alone in the library and my pen just died.” I get an “smh” and a “Who uses pens anymore?”

No one cares.

“You are insensitive and I hate you,” I reply. “Sniff.”

Excuse me? Who uses pens? Me. I do. I won the penmanship contest in the second grade and since then in no circumstance can I ever be without one. The death of the pen is the writer’s nightmare, the Notes App of the iPhone notwithstanding. Touch keyboards will never replace the trusty, black and versatile ballpoint, so I always carry one with me. One must be perpetually ready to write down street names in Paris, food names in Germany, train times, poems. To draw hearts on the hands of London lovers. To sign your name. To write memos! Memos, memos, memos. I don’t know how to use Reminders on my iPhone, let’s be real. Too abstract.

I guess, as my laptop battery dies, that my Mugar day is over. Ruined. Without ink I am powerless. I have a lot to read and margin note taking is my most enduring scholastic talent, never mind how what I write down is usually the opposite of informative (“Lol” “wtf” “?”). I consider stopping at City Co. to buy a replacement, but I know it’s too soon. Lip quivers. I don’t want another pen. Moving on to a new writing utensil — a ballpoint, a fountain, a Bic felt tip, a rollerball — is always an adjustment. An investment. A commitment. A definer of the self. Don’t you think?

Maybe I’m being dramatic. It’s just a pen. I get it. But I’ve learned a lesson. Love your pens while you have them (while the world still has them?). And always bring a back-up.

Anne Whiting is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Fall 2012 weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at aew@bu.edu.