Yellow Monster

At last peace and tranquillity have descended upon the monster writing world. Nice isn’t it? Cosy too. It’s also restful. 🙂

And with that, this week’s writing exercise is to write about the frustrations of actually sitting down and writing. You should do this for 15 minutes – off you go!

Pen Thieves

In quiet moments of which there are precious few, I am given to ponder some of life’s great mysteries. Like why can I never lay my hands on a pen. At home I do my best to always put the things back in the same place whenever I use them. I have even, on occasions, secreted a second pen in a convenient drawer or perhaps on a shelf.

Imagine my despair when I reach for the pen that I put carefully in the usual place the previous day and discover nothing but fresh air.

“Has anyone seen my pen?” I ask with little hope or indeed no hope of a positive answer i.e.: “No.”, “I haven’t touched it.”, “Nothing to do with me.”, “You lost your pen again?” or my personal favourite, “You must have put it somewhere else.”

I take a deep calm breath and retreat to look in the secret place where I keep my spare pen. Hell’s teeth! It’s as empty as my wallet.

I choke off an angry expletive and begin a frantic search for anything to write with and after fifteen minutes I am in possession of a large permanent marker (you know, for writing on cardboard boxes in really big letters) and the stub of a pencil with no point. I sharpen the pencil with a penknife because my pencil sharpener is also missing.

At last I sit down to write but find I have forgotten what it was that I wanted to say.

Sadly it doesn’t stop there. When I worked in an office someone would always borrow my pen and could not remember where they left it. Or in the delivery office the lorry driver would forget to return my pen after signing for the load. Someone, and I never learned who, would frequently appropriate the spare pen from my desk drawer. When I worked in a supermarket I found that the manager would borrow my pen and glibly tell me he must have left it on the shelf in the warehouse.

I try not to let it get me down. But my wife always borrows my pen and only returns one out of every twenty. My daughter borrows my pen when I am staying with her and runs out nineteen out of twenty. My son rarely borrows my pen but never returns any.

I have come to the inevitable conclusion that either my pens have been spirited to the great stationery cupboard in the sky for all eternity or I am surrounded by merciless pen thieves.

Posted: Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 @ 10:50 am
Categories: Uncategorized.
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