Finding a pen is today's society is a little harder than I thought. I couldn't find my pen when I got to the airport on Monday. So I figure I'll just buy a pen at the sundries store. Shouldn't it be that easy? Well good luck to all of you fellow penless folk. Good luck at locating a pen out there. I tried the sundries store. No good. I tried the bookstore. Nada. I was getting pretty desperate. My thoughts were moving towards liberating a pen from some poor unsuspecting fool.

Oh lord, lead me unto a pen. A simple fountain of ink I ask for, that is all. I intoned my prayer searching the seats beside me at Gate 30. Alas, my prayers are raised up to deaf ears or God keeps bankers hours? I'm kind of leaning towards the latter. I would if I was God. I mean, you're God. You shouldn't have to be up @ 5 am for prayers.

And back to it…

The only store I haven't checked yet is The Children's Fairyland Stand. Hmmm… Lo and behold, a pen. Albeit, a pen topped with a flamingo or a parrot and costing all of $6.00. Six dollars for a pen? Damn! And a pretty outrageous pen at that. Apparently, pens are only for children now and the only way to get them interested is a high price and foolish packaging.

Do you remember when pens were the arena of adults? I most decidedly recall getting punished for running off with my dad's pens. I was enthralled by pens. They seemed so special. They weren't like pencils. If you wrote in pencil, it could be erased. It could disappear and be forgotten. But with a pen, with a pen you were immortal. You could leave your mark and never take it back. I'm sure I left my mark a few places that I wasn't supposed to. I wasn't formerly allowed to use a pen until Junior High. I thought it was going to be an exciting moment but erasable ink was invented… And so pens became like pencils, just more colorful.

Now, the pen has become the computer, the handheld device, the blackberry, the iphone. Device trumps pen. Pen becomes pencil. I miss the pen's influence.

Next victim, paper?