The author, John Marek, is a writer and executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
A few years ago, I wrote a magazine article about Banana Republic, the real safari-clothing Banana Republic of the 1980s, not the upscale Gap that has appropriated the name. In that piece, I mentioned one iconic BR item I still own, the Israeli Paratrooper Briefcase. To quote the catalog description:
“When called away suddenly on business (to Entebbe, for example), it can be hard to organize paperwork. To cope with the kind of bureaucratic entanglements that accompany international brinksmanship, the fast descending Israeli paratrooper takes along a durable briefcase – one with D-rings, a padded adjustable shoulder strap, three big inside compartments appropriate for legal pads, and an exterior flap pocket sized to suit a ponderous paperback. Also: two rows of sturdy loops for implements mightier than swords.”
So, yeah … basically nonsense. But in the spring of 1986, that bag symbolized the life I wanted to live – one of adventure, intrigue and maybe even a little danger. I bought the bag, transferred all my notepads, files and writing supplies into it, and waited for the excitement to begin. And waited. Later that day, I walked down to the 7-11 and bought a Slurpee. Intrigue, indeed.
I determined that, although my $29.95 (plus shipping) investment in the bag was sound, there was still something missing, some hidden key to opening up the adventure. Logically, I decided that the missing element must be those “implements mightier than swords.” I had transferred a couple of cheap gimme pens from a local insurance company to the bag; that would not do. Reinvigorated, I drove to Woolworths and headed to the office supply aisle. Lo and behold, the very pen I needed to kickstart my adventurous life and bold writing career all but jumped out and bit me, the Pilot Explorer.
This all came back to me recently when I saw an ad for the new, relaunched Pilot Explorer. Unlike the ’80s version, a $2 chunky ballpoint with a big colorful clip, the new Explorer is a $25 fountain pen. Apparently, exploration has gentrified.
The Explorer wasn’t my first, or last, attempt to define myself or at least reflect a particular image with a pen. Like most kids, I wrote with what the school specified, or my parents bought me, up through junior high. My very first case of pen envy came in seventh grade when I saw the kid next to me in math class writing with a BIC 4-color. I had to have that pen. We went grocery shopping as a family in those days, and our newfangled Kroger supermarket had a surprisingly large stationary section. As we perused that aisle, I studied the pen display as if looking for some specific item, then casually pulled a 4-color off its peg hook and placed it in the shopping cart. “Been looking for one of these. Need it for math class.” I’m not sure just how gullible mom and dad really were, but I knew they knew math was the one and only subject that ever gave me any difficulty, and so it was the one they would be least likely to question.
A few years later, Papermate debuted the Erasermate, the first erasable ink pen. By then, I had a little spending money of my own, thanks to lawn mowing and odd jobs, and I was among the first in my high school to get one. It was an exciting novelty and fun to show people but almost entirely useless to me as a writing instrument. The “ink” was really colored rubber cement, and as a lefty, I smeared it beyond legibility before it could dry.
My next memorable writing implement came as a Christmas gift my second year in college. It was a thin silver pen with a tiny LCD clock in the barrel. I thought it looked kind of classy and proudly whipped it out to take notes in my business law class. I remember this because a girl sitting next to me who favored flowing peasant skirts and bore a passing resemblance to
Stevie Nicks asked me, “Does that pen have a clock in it?”
“Why yes. Yes, it does.” I responded brightly, intrigued by where this line of questioning might lead.
“Huh, that’s kind of stupid.” Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
After that year, I switched schools, feeling I’d gotten a little distracted from my educational goals and wanting to get serious about making it through that “college thing.” I chose a more serious pen to demonstrate this more serious attitude, the BIC Accountant Fine Black. It was essentially a white version of the BIC Crystal, but with a different cap and a metal clip. It said, no nonsense here, just workmanlike efficiency.
After graduating, I entered that “Hemingway” phase where the paratrooper briefcase and the Explorer pen came in. By the late ’80s, I had graduated to a Cross pen, but more as a fashion accessory than a writing instrument. I wore a lot of L.L. Bean button-down shirts at the time. They had a pocket flap with a pen hole in it, but the opening was so small, about the only thing you could stick through it was a Cross, and even that was hard to get in and out.
By the early 2000s, things were good, and I had moved up to the big league of pens, Mont Blanc and Waterman. I was never quite able to pull the trigger on the REALLY costly ones, but, yeah, I own a couple of $100 pens I’ve barely touched in more than a decade. Sell them or give them away, you say. That would be a heck of a lot easier if they didn’t have my name engraved on the side.
These days, my everyday carry is a utilitarian multi-tool pen that somewhat resembles the old Accountant Fine Black, but has a screwdriver hidden in the barrel, a level where the clock was on the one pseudo-Stevie thought was stupid, and a rubber stylus for … well, who knows. Oh, and it’s bright yellow, which is less of a fashion statement and more of a harder-to-misplace statement. The ol’ eyes ain’t what they used to be.