I realized I had not posted in far too long, and as a writer, this is a sin, catastrophe, cataclysmic disaster, or whatever post-apocalyptic superlative you choose. I’ve got enough excuses to form a line out the door and around the world only to end right where the line begins, much like the “Snake” game on the old Nokia mobile phones. You’d think a snake could weasel out of a tight space better than any other animal (even a weasel), but alas, there simply is no space. But ah, me, I digress.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve a plethora of topics to write, but most seem to require much more time than how long I anticipate I’ll be able to force my eyelids to remain open, so I would like to impart upon you a piece of wisdom I had learned when I was in the fifth grade. The lesson I learned–I suppose much earlier than many do and cats never do–is that curiosity is dangerous.
Luckily for my safety, the way which I learned my lesson was far less physically harmful so much as socially embarrassing, but hey, it will be a story to tell my own kids when they’ve developed long enough attention spans and a sense of humor.
So there I was, sitting in Social Science, a class commandeered by a teacher whose name was reminiscent of “boogers,” (needless to say we enjoyed the nicknames we thought of). Bored out of my mind, completely ignoring the lecture on globalization, state capitols, or whatever other nonsense we were being spoon-fed, my pen was somehow astronomically more interesting. How fascinating was the tension in the spring, how captivating was the design and manufacturing, how enchanting was the consistency of the ink (and so on and so on). I fancied myself a mechanic, expertly dissembling and reassembling an engine, except my specimen was far simpler, so my imagined ego-boost was only cosmetic.
After rebuilding the pen about a dozen times–completely oblivious to whatever Mrs. Booger was spouting and all else that took place in the world–I was confident I had become a virtuoso in the art of Pen Reconstruction. As they say, however, he who gets too comfortable will pay the price. What’s this? An error? It can’t be, I’ve done this a dozen times without a problem before… The malfunction, which had effectively ceased production and struck a small pang of fear in my heart was that I had managed to remove the metal tip of the pen from its proper end on the ink cartridge and firmly lodge it into the other end. This was a potential safety issue, for any second now the ink was bound to escape and onto the factory floor (my school desk) and then the whole plant would need to be shut down. Time is money, as they also say.
Instead of memorizing facts that would surely ace the ACT or things that would no doubt earn me acceptance into Harvard, I preoccupied myself that auspicious of days with how to remove the tip of the pen from the wrong end of the ink cartridge. I think the thought of how I would explain this to my parents may have popped into my head, but mostly I began problem solving.
I thought, “A paperclip would do no good in prying it out, it wouldn’t even fit in there. I don’t have scissors to cut it out. I have nothing to push it out from the other end. Well, Old Chap, it must be sucked out.” Can you see where this is going? I didn’t.
I placed my lips around the ink cartridge and voided the pressure from within my mouth. Nothing. Try, try again and you will succeed. Again, I sucked but I had done well to ensure that pen tip would stay. Third time’s the charm, and surely it was. I assume the pen tip flew into the back of my mouth, not unlike a pinbal banging around my throat, earning points off my tonsils, etc. The reason I assume, was because the tip was not the only part of the pen which entered my mouth.
All I knew at that moment was that ink tasted terrible. My whole mouth was flooded, as if I succumbed to my primal urges and bit into some wild animal’s neck that bled a thick, deep blue blood. I coughed loudly, my secret was out, any efforts to inconspicuously not pay attention were swallowed with the pen tip as I desperately tried to expunge the vile ink from my mouth and all over my desk. The eyes of all my classmates upon me, their laughter soon filled the air when they put two and two together and realized why I was coughing up ink. Mrs. Booger did not know if she should call the nurse, scowl, or join in her students’ chortling, for she just watched as I retched pen ink from my mouth onto my desk.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
I nodded. “May I be excused?”
She nodded.
I exited the classroom to wash my mouth out, laughter exploding as I closed the door behind me. I never realized up until then that all those times my father made me wash my mouth out with soap for cursing wasn’t a punishment, but practice. Then, I was thankful for practicing how to wash my mouth out, thankful he had me build up a tolerance for soap, because I was able to get most of the ink out of my mouth, albeit a lingering taste on my tongue and a new hue, as if I had sucked on many a deep-blue candy.
I slowly trudged back to class, accepting my fate as the laughing stock of the class. Now I REALLY wondered how I would explain this to my mother.
Needless to say, I learned three valuable lessons that day. One, that ink actually tastes terrible (so does the resin you use to prep your bow to play the violin, contrary to belief, it does not taste like maple syrup). Two, don’t suck from an ink cartridge, no matter how much you think you know what you’re doing. Three, no matter how many times you can dissect a pen, you are not an engineer. As simple as the pen is, it always has a trick or two up its ink cartridge. Surely, the pen is mightier–and more foul–than the sword.
So as I walked through the school doors on my way home that day, I walked out with a blue mouth, hurt pride, and a new-found respect for pens. I also walked out understanding the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.”
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