BS: Where do all the pens go?

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 02:58 AM

I don't steal pens I just acquire them by accident, honest gov! Even the nice flowing Pilot G2 retractable in red. The thing is I am a pen fiddler once I have a pen or pencil in my hand or mouth(especially if it is a nice one) you just as well say bye-bye to it.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 05:17 PM

Haven't bought a pan for some time. Charities and merchants and salesmen have taken to including a pen with their begging letters and sales blurbs.
At the moment, I am using one with S.P.C.A. on the barrel.

Last week I did go through the pens that have wound up in the kitchen (where we open mail, sit around doing crosswords, making grocery lists, etc., etc.) and threw out those that have gone kaput.
Our answer to this thread is that they all end up in the kitchen.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Donuel
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 05:30 PM

where did all the penis go
long time pissing
where di

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 28 Mar 11 - 09:31 PM

G'day all,

Of course it all depends upon which pen!

The gold-filled cap Parker 51 fountain pen, (a 'demonstrator's pen' - one used to sell the line, by a travelling Parker representative) for which I paid three guineas, in 1963, from a high class hock shop (still trading - a few hundred metres from where I now work in Sydney) - back before I decided a banking career was not in my blood - is still cap (and nib)-down in my hand made lignum vitae pen stand ... and used when I really don't want to just scrawl a note!

Regard(les)s,

Bob

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 03:29 AM

The last one acquired was from some drinking water company trying to flog bottles of (not mineral mind you) treated water.

I remember my first fountain pen that was in 1963 it was a beautiful pen to write with, not for scrawling notes. There is something about the smell of the ink on fresh paper it's lovely. Later it was replaced by the cartridge pen which was still nice to use but ran the risk of leaking cartridges all over schoolwork so the biro became the favourite and most convenient. I still use the ink filled pen but for letter writing rather than everyday use.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 06:52 AM

"I never have any trouble finding a pen. It's finding a pen that works that's the issue. I usually have to try four in order to find one that works. I've tried throwing out the ones that don't work, but it doesn't help. There seems to be a cosmic law which states that 75% of the pens in my house won't work. If I throw the bad ones out, good ones simply die to take their place."

I share your pain (if not your pen!), Bee-dubyah, the same thing happens to me. For that reason I tend to prefer pencils - at least for writing notes with. I once bought a big box of unsharpened pencils from a discount store. When I tried to sharpen one, with a standard pencil sharpener, I realised why they were so cheap. They appeared to be made of some material that was so incredibly hard and intractable that they were virtually unsharpenable!

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Mooh
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 11:47 AM

For many years I worked in the cleaning industry, mostly schools and government buildings, and I can't estimate how many pens we swept up, removed from drains, dislodged from furniture, and otherwise trashed. God knows why they were where they were, but anything that had the misfortune to be lost might also have had the misfortune to be too dirty to reuse. Off to the dumpster they went.

Things that fall on the floor are deliberately or indeliberately kicked under other things or simply away, picked up and kept, etc. Pens especially. Often, people are careless with things they don't value, or aren't their own.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 01:57 PM

You're right, Mooh. I've handed out Biros to children in Ghana, Ivory Coast. Senegal, Gambia, Morocca, Tunisia etc just as a little gift, and you'd think I'd given them a hundred pounds. One can be sure they won't 'lose' them or chuck them away, as their families haven't the wherewithal to buy anything like that.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 02:01 PM

Morocco!

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 29 Mar 11 - 02:13 PM

I took a while to find a black pen for the census on Sunday, before turning the page to find blue was also okay...I'm inklined to think they should have told us on the front page.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Patsy
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 03:08 AM

Eliza, the things we take for granted here must be like gold dust to them. Where I work there is a regular stationery supply where pens are plentiful which more often than not end up chucked in the back of somebody's desk. People move around quite a bit leaving it behind so I would imagine that if every desk on site was emptied it could supply a school or two with pens, pencils and rulers. Such a waste.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 04:51 AM

Pens are just like people. They seek beauty and truth. They wander off in search of the perfect artist or scientist who will fulfill their need to be part of the finer things.

Many, just like we humans, get lost on that journey and end up like winos and junkies in the gutters, under fridges, down drains and the like. Drained of all virtue, Dried up and broken.

Some actually do make it. I am certain, I saw one of my lost pens on a table at the last academy awards. Inky... I am so proud!

Most lead normal, boring functional lives but no less heroic lives on nurse stations in hospitals, on the teacher desks, in a cup next to my computer at work.

Do not take any pen for granted.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 04:56 AM

Patsy, you're so right. When I was teaching, the schools used to chuck away at the end of the year any exercise books which had been written in, even if only on a couple of pages. My thrifty mother would have turned in her grave, so I always got the children to pull out the unsullied pages and put them in the cupboard for tests and quizzes etc. Also, pencils were ditched if less than about six inches long! The African children I've met would have beamed with delight to receive these paltry things. I'd even give away half-empty toothpaste tubes, shampoo, my house sandals, anything I didn't particularly need, when I flew home. We are so, so lucky aren't we?

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 05:51 AM

I may have the answer.
I bought a new pack of biro's yesterday. I decided to leave them on the worksurface in the kitchen, to see what happens.
Woke up this morning and they are still there.
So it would seem that if you don't open the packet, you won't lose them.
Ha!

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 05:06 PM

I have to report back, that a very serious situation has occurred.
I checked the pack of Biro's and low and behold 1 pen has gone on the run and another cheeky bugger was halfway out the pack.
It's a mystery to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: paula t
Date: 30 Mar 11 - 06:30 PM

I don't know where my pens go....but they obviously go along with my mascara, blusher brush and perfume. I've asked around, but no-one has ever borrowed them!
I've found the best way to get them to come back is to wander around the house stamping and muttering barely audible things under my breath such as, "....on strike....no cooking.....etc.
Seems to work!They turn up unexpectedly in areas already searched thoroughly though. Spooky eh?

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 05:10 PM

Nothing has disapeared today. Maybe somebody has been looking at this thread and knows their game is up.

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 09:39 PM

For a bit of panache in all senses of the word, I want one of THESE!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 09:44 PM

I worked for about five years as a draftsman/production illustrator at Boeing between 1966 and 1970 (then came the big lay-off. Famous roadside sign: "Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?"). I had occasion from time to time to use a 9H pencil. It was like trying to draw with a nail!

Now, all of that is done on computers (CAD). The company gets a bit unhappy if computers start disappearing.

Yeah, I have a Space Pen also, that my son gave me a few years ago. Great pen!

Great help whenever I have to write under butter. . . .

For a bit of panache in all senses of the word, I want one of THESE!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Where do all the pens go?
From: Don Firth
Date: 31 Mar 11 - 09:46 PM

Hmm! Have I developed a stutter?

Don Firth