The fountain pen that my sister gave me not so long ago is dead. the ink dried up in the tip and while I soaked it to cleanse it, the water seems to have damaged the ink tunnel and the pen just won't work...
It's not a chaotic thing, it was a cheap, plastic pen that has some sort of cow-ish cartoon character printed on it. Fountain pens are a momentum of the past... When I was in high-school I had a literature teacher that used to say he was from Jupiter; he claimed that he came to earth to teach literature to kids like us.
Many of the students who had him talked dirt and debris about him; he was not an easy teacher to have, he demanded attention, work and brains; something you do not want to have or give when you are in your full blown teens. He added a plus: we wanted us to learn and use handwriting (italic or cursive) and we were to learn it with the use of fountain pens; our notebooks had to have the same ink TONE, otherwise we would have to redo them all over again.
His examinations were oral as he browsed through our notebooks. I remember seeing my classmates being flunked because their ink tones did not match or he found a word or two in the "mold" writing (non cursive)...Needless to say the horror it caused for him that we used an atomic or ball point pen... LOL
He was a rosecrozier, an old man set in his ways who would always wear a handkerchief on his jacket pocket, his trousers were always long enough to keep the socks covered and he would wear a hat that would take off to greet our mothers... I participated in a short story and poetry contest that I did not know I wasn't supposed to; naturally as I wasn't supposed to, I did not win but the jury panel told me that otherwise I would have won.
That day I got late to class, he was mad. The prefect told him where I was and I can still remember the proud gaze he had on his face as he realized I was getting awarded for my achievements in literature. My sister had him as a teacher years later, she told me he was disappointed of her as she is not as a literature fan as I am, and she had to redo several of her notebooks due to ink tone change and handwriting change...I never had to redo mine.
I am pretty sure he is dead now... I own a few fountain pens and I try to write cursive as he taught me; though most of the time the need for speed does not allow me to be as detailed as he was; still I have my waterman and my mont blanc and I still feel as I wield them in my hands that I should be getting ready to sign the peace treaty of -some- country.
Still he is with me and I remember him every day. My fountain pen is the best memory of those days and the teachings he taught me.... Well, all of us, though as usual and as with any other student body, his teachings landed with us some in fertile ground and some... in water....
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