After an agonizing search in my desk drawer that lasted forever (who knew a 15 x 12 inch drawer could hold so many things), I finally found it–my pen!
It looked weird…too plain. Not quite what I remembered. In my memory, it was rather shiny, elegant, all pretty curves and easy on the eye, or at least, a lot better than its current reality. Perhaps, my mind had been polishing its memory like lost love, romanticizing it until I forget the reality.
It seemed, a lot of other facts escaped my memory too. For example, why did I store it with the rest of the crap I own. I agree the drawer is supposed to have working things, but mostly, mine is the museum of fossils–long-dead things that I couldn’t throw away for reasons better left to imagination.
Did it still work?
I held it in my hand gingerly. It felt awkward, like I had lost a limb without knowing that it had gone missing, and now that I’ve found it after an eternity, I don’t know how to reattach it to the rest of me.
I held it between my fingers and moved it around, ill at ease. My fingers didn’t respond happily, the way they should have. After all, it is something they had held for half their life. They ached from the effort of mock-scribbling in the air.
Did it still work? I tried scribbling on my palm. All it did was scratch the sensitive skin.
Was the refill dry? But then another lost fact sprung to my mind–these ballpoint pens were always hopeless on the skin. I looked around for a scrap of paper–a difficult task, considering I hadn’t written in eons. Why would I? In a perfect world, everything I needed to write could be typed on the Notes app of my phone and laptop.
Only, this world wasn’t perfect anymore.
Finally, a piece of paper bag presented itself. I scribbled on the back side and it worked. Great! Now, all that remained was to dig out a notebook to teach my daughter how to write…
Sigh! Home schooling can be pretty exhausting…
Short Stories 