It really does write upside down.
I’ve written with it while lying on my back in bed, under a mosquito net, by the flickering light of a Chinese candle, after the oil lamp ran dry in many an African town that are still waiting for electricity’s arrival.
It really is dependable.
I’ve used it in the Central African rainforest, under a blazing East African sun, and even in the middle of a Saharan dust storm that blew through a West African village in which I was working.
It really is versatile.
Even though it costs less than 60 cents to manufacture, I never hesitated tucking one into the breast pocket of my dress shirt in combination with a Jerry Garcia or Vineyard Vines tie. Not once was I ever ticketed by the GQ fashion police.
Nevertheless, there was quite a bit of information about this unassuming five-inch government-issue item in the article that surprised and amazed me. Apparently, it can stand toe to toe with the specifications (16 pages!) of the best federal government procurements.
“The ink cartridge shall be capable of producing, under 125 grams of pressure, a line not less than 5,000 feet long.”
Wow! That’s about 16 football fields!
“Blobs shall not average more than 15 per 1,000 feet of writing, with a maximum of 25for any 1,000 foot increment.”
Where do they teach this kind of technical writing? I would love to meet the official “blob” testing team. “Good afternoon, Mr. Naimoli, I’m the Main Blobster, and these are my assistants, Mr. Blobble Head and Just Call Me Blob. By the way, we happen to be blobbers who blog. We’re blobber-bloggers.”
“Writing shall not be completely removed after two applications of chemical bleach.”
Say what? This product should carry a consumer warning, like the kind on cigarette packs: “Caution! Wear with expensive dress shirts and ties at your own risk!”
“It must be able to write continuously for a mile and in temperatures up to 160 degrees and down to 40 degrees below zero.”
I guess they had to come up with some exotic travel perks and sturdy walking shoes for the poor entry-level staff responsible for ensuring compliance with this spec.
What is this tungsten carbide-cobalt Superhero?
Move over, Ironman!
It’s a ballpoint pen, with the white-lettered words “Skilcraft U.S. Government” stamped on the plastic barrel.
According to the article, blind workers in Wisconsin and North Carolina assemble them as part of a 72-year old legislative mandate. Although production has declined precipitously during the last two decades, many federal agencies, particularly the military, are still procuring them.
Frankly, I had no idea so many people were still placing pen in hand and putting both to paper. By the look of some of the chicken scratch I’ve witnessed over the years—primarily among physicians—I’m surprised there isn’t better regulation of this activity.
I would enthusiastically endorse a public writing test, for example—kind of like a driver’s test. To obtain a writing license, the applicant would have to compose three legible sentences on a 3x5 index card that any random state trooper with cool shades or a Catholic nun could read in the dark, with only the aid of a flashlight and votive candle, respectively.
On second thought, it’s probably better that most humans have either abandoned the pen by now or by-passed it entirely in favor of the keyboard, the keypad, or both.
Curiously, as I was writing the draft of this posting—with a ballpoint pen that was not a Skilcraft, on a yellow legal pad, en route to Texas from Maryland via Southwest Airlines—the passenger next to me leaned over at one point and said, “I haven’t seen anyone write longhand in a long time.”
“In fact,” he continued, “I don’t think I or my kids could do it anymore,” as he tapped away on his laptop keyboard.
A quick glance around the cabin revealed he was in excellent company: the only people using pens were the stewards, who were taking beverage orders, and I.
“Well,” I said, “I am writing a little nonsense piece about writing and thought it only appropriate that I pen the first draft,” as I gradually released my grip on my rubber comfort, Pentel Hyper G07 (which, by the sound of it, should probably come with protective goggles, an insurance policy, and a permit to operate).
He smiled and nodded approvingly, and then added: “You know, Stephen King wrote a draft of one of his novels with a #2 lead pencil.” “I can’t remember which one,” he continued, “but you should ‘google’ it.”
‘Google’ it I did. It appears that King prefers to write many of his drafts in longhand, on a steno pad, with a #2, just as my traveling companion indicated.
Of course, forty years ago, I wasn’t allowed to use any kind of ballpoint pen, permit or no permit.
In St. Kevin’s parochial school in the 1960’s, the good Sisters of St. Joseph limited our writing options to the #2 pencil, a la Mr. King (whose novels, by the way, are only a tad bit scarier than life at St K’s back then); a fountain pen; or bloody knuckles (a great name for a heavy metal band, I might add!).
Think about Meryl Streep’s character in the movie “Doubt” and you get a fairly accurate picture of daily life, or should I say strife, as I experienced it in the
60’s.
Handwriting, or “penmanship,” as the nuns preferred to call it, was a very serious business at St. K’s. The wooden-ruler-packing Sisters, in those menacing long black habits, which hid hundreds of interior pouches perfect for squirreling away contraband confiscated from Catholic adolescents during what must have seemed to the nuns like interminable days in the asylum, saw to it that we mastered this fine-motor skill.
We were graded on penmanship. We actually had a handwriting class that met several times a week, during which we learned to write longhand according to the “Palmer Method” handbook.
Everything we needed to know about writing was contained in that thin handbook, which the school loaned to us. To protect the school’s property, we were obliged to cover this and every textbook. Most of my classmates’ parents bought plastic covers, available in different colors, each with pre-fab sleeves into which the front and back covers would slide effortlessly. It took all of 30 seconds to complete the job with these covers.
In contrast, my father insisted on covering Palmer’s primer and all my books with brown paper, which he cut from A+P grocery bags. He had a special knack for pulling the paper taught around the binding and back and front covers, without a single wrinkle, with the exception of the natural creases in the bags. He wrote the title of each book on the cover with a black magic marker.
It was time-consuming and an old-school routine, but all my books were original works of art! He was way ahead of his time with respect to saving the Earth.
As I remember it, good penmanship, according to Palmer, began and ended with good mechanics, chief among them resting the wrist flat on the paper, knuckles turned up. I always wondered whether the nuns had signed a pact with Palmer: “You position those knuckles; we’ll take care of the rest!”
We were taught to resist the temptation (oh there were so many we were taught to resist back then, it was difficult keeping straight what did and did not buy us a ticket on the express train to hell) to roll the wrist on its side. When you finish reading this, pick up a pen, if you can find one and remember how to use it, and observe how naturally the wrist rolls over.
The Palmer handbook provided a series of wrist-down exercises to foster proper technique and discipline. Of course, handwriting wasn’t the only discipline-inducing activity at the K, but that’s another story for another time.
I still remember all those repetitive “push and pull” strokes and “oval-making” exercises we used to practice with the wrist flat on the paper and the pen nestled between the thumb and fore-finger. Not an easy task!
The last time I remember practicing those exercises was in 1984, in an OBGYN’s office, in Durham, North Carolina. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t the kind of place the nuns envisioned us applying our skills when they first introduced us to Palmer.
I accompanied my wife to one of her first appointments with her doctor early in her first pregnancy. We were sitting in the examining room—well, I was sitting; she was reclining, resplendent in her white Gucci examination gown, on the paper-covered stainless steel table,staring at the ceiling above. Too bad I didn’t have a Skilcraft with me; she could have written, upside-down, her thoughts at that very moment!
In any case, I don’t remember why the OBGYN and I started talking about handwriting once he came into the room, but it turned out that he, too, had learned the Palmer method when he was young.
To prove it, he took out his pen and started doing “push and pulls” on the examining paper upon which his patient was reclining. Next to his push and pulls I demonstrated some of my best ovals. In turn, he repeated my ovals, and I his push and pulls. Once we got started, we couldn’t stop.
I’m sure we punctured quite a few holes in that thin paper, with all those repetitive motions with our dueling ballpoints. Once we finished, we stood there for a time admiring our work.
By this point, you can imagine how agitated the patient had become, her initial bemusement with our adolescent manipulations now nothing more than a distant memory. I suspect she would have kicked us both, if she could have.
Needless to say, that was the last time I set foot in an OBGYN office with my wife. To her credit, she did allow me to chew some gum—an infraction that trumped poor handwriting at St. K’s, and usually resulted in an after-school supervised session of blackboard eraser clapping—while I watched her give birth to the first of our two sons, neither of which, I might add, have any chance whatsoever of obtaining a handwriting license.
In the birthing room that night in February twenty-six years ago, as I chewed away without fear, it was my wife, the OBGYN and his assistant who impressed everyone with their own version of pushing and pulling.
Although I enjoy cursive writing—I am fairly certain the nuns never called it that—I don’t have much occasion to use it. Almost all my correspondence is via email or text messaging these days.
I type the annual holiday letter, but do address, by hand, all the envelopes. It is an end-of-year tradition to which I always look forward.
My daughter-in-law asked me to write her “Save the Date” wedding announcements and envelopes two years ago, a task I accepted with great honor and pleasure. Of course, some people thought it was my wife’s handiwork, but that didn’t bother me.
I also must confess—another exercise we practiced diligently at St. K’s—that I don’t adhere to all the Palmer method techniques when I write in longhand today. My penance: “Thank the nuns for your better-than-average penmanship!”
Thank you, Sisters of St. Joseph.
Soon I will have access again to those extraordinary Skilcraft ballpoints, thanks to a modest job transition. But I don’t want the Sisters or Stephen King to find out.
I might end up being forced to watch “The Shining” in a dark, musty cave reeking of sulpher and chalk dust with nothing more than a #2 to chew on.
