on pens

This afternoon, Mom and I went to Wal-Mart to replenish our dwindling supply of food. Today was the first time I've been in a Chinese grocery store in ages, because we all know I have a distinct aversion to shopping. (I count Wal-Mart in China to be a Chinese grocery store. It has a whole section of dried fish and no tortilla chips.) 

Anyhow, I was in the stationary section looking for 0.7 millimeter pencil leads, because I only have 0.5 millimeter ones, and I saw this: 

Okay, well technically I didn't see the bottle, I saw the little cardboard box encasing the bottle, but you get the idea. Ink reminds me of third grade. See, when you go to Chinese school, you use a pencil for every subject until you get to third grade. Then, when your Chinese (the subject) teacher deems your handwriting neat enough, you 'get' to use a fountain pen. A huge fuss is made of this, and the teacher usually encourages competition between students to see who can use a fountain pen first etc. When I was in third grade, I was thrilled to be in the first ten students ( out of the sixty in my class) who got to use a fountain pen. Writing with  fountain pen was the utmost symbol of coolness, and all the 'big kids' used them. Need I tell you how much of a pain remembering to fill mine up each night was? 

In fourth grade you get to use a fountain pen for math too, and this privilege is given out based on your math grade. Toting around a bottle of ink in the bottom of my backpack and trying to refill my pen without getting navy splatters on my school uniform was really fun. In fifth grade you start using a fountain pen for every subject. Then, when you get to sixth grade, you're suddenly required to use gel pens, because that's what people use in middle school. Not having to deal with the mess and hassle of a fountain pen would be great if it weren't for the catch: almost every teacher requires a different color of ink, and using the wrong pen was a big deal. I remember watching kids get yelled at over it. I was lucky in that because I was really quiet at school, the teachers would use me to separate boys who liked to talk in class, and they (the guy sitting next to me) were always more than happy to lend me one of their pens if I had left mine at home. 

I bought the bottle of ink, because I wanted to use my fountain pen (the one I've been using since fourth grade) to mess around with writing styles for a language that I'm working on, Malian, since I didn't move my last bottle for fear of it breaking. And even though they're somewhat of a pain, I have to confess that writing with a fountain pen just feels right.