Sell Me This Pen

"A person's toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one's neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa."

–?Dale Carnegie,?How to Win Friends And Influence People

You believe in the quote, “you get what you pay for”?

Well, what’s the worst thing that could happen with a ?5 pen, the one you're holding right now?

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you’re driving home from work to pick your son up from school on a rainy Tuesday evening.

It’s getting dark. Traffic is heavy, downpour is heavy. Typical commute from work, right?

You're driving home from work, then all of a sudden this drunk son of a bitch rear-ends your tail, crushing your trunk in the process.

Airbags go off and?boom. You’re dazed and confused. What's going on?

There’s a sudden silence that lasts for an eternity…?

Then the car reverses, drives past you, then drives off.

Let’s go back a bit.

You just paid for the bills and little Timmy’s school tuition. You never had enough money to cover for your car’s insurance to begin with. Heck, who does these days?

The cost of repair will set you back at least 3 months’ worth of your salary.

Guess Timmy’s gonna have to learn to ride the bus to get to school from now on. He’s only 5.

It’s a?looong?ways of public transportation after this.

You can’t use the car because you are now a road liability, and you can’t afford to go anywhere else from now on.

No more family outings. No more Sunday church. No more grocery shopping at big store brands.

Sorry, Timmy.

It could be worse, though. Your son almost turned into an orphan that night.

Okay, let's snap back to the present.

Right now, all you are ever focused on is getting that plate number, so you can negotiate with the driver and come to terms with the damage.

Right now, there is this?tiny?sliver of opportunity, about 3 seconds before he drives off and blends in with the traffic, never to be seen again.

You use that time to focus on that small plate number at the back of his car, like that super smart detective you watched on Netflix last week.

But this is the real world. And in the real world, adrenaline makes you forget a lot of important things…

Like plate numbers.

Your phone is dead. You can’t take a photo or call someone. You forget your charger at home, and you don’t have those USB things that you stick in your car’s cigarette lighter to charge your phone while you drive, either.

Also, you never bothered to install cameras in your car. A waste of money, you thought. It’s money you could allot elsewhere.

The hazard lights stop working. You press on the button to go off but nothing happens. The other cars that saw you get tail-ended can notice you right now, so are the bystanders at the side of the road.

But not for long. Incoming traffic won’t, nor will the traffic enforcers. You are a chain collision waiting to happen.

So you grab your purse as you nervously scrounge for something to write with, like that ?5 pen you may or may have not kept.

Because,?hey, it’s only five bucks. If it was a bit more valuable, you’d find a way to make sure that it’s there, amirite?

You say the numbers out loud in an effort to retain the memory, amidst fleeting thoughts on what to tell your mom once you get home, the anxiety and stress of letting Timmy ride the bus all by himself, the horrible things you’d say in court...

…on and on and on and on…

You look for something to write on, too. A notepad, a piece of paper, a napkin… Anything to write the numbers down.

“I knew I put it in here somewhere!?”

You start to panic so much that you forget that you might forget the numbers you’ve written in your head.

You find the pen. Nothing to write on. Not one single, goddamned piece of paper in your purse.

You use your palm to write on. It’s cold, clammy and frankly it doesn’t matter at this point. You write it down.

You write it down.

You write it down.

“C’mon!?Write!”

“F*ck!”

You bang the pen against your thigh to make it work. You bang it against the dashboard.

Still, nothing.

You start to doubt yourself.

You write it down again. And again. And again. Nada. Only faint traces of ink on your skin. Even with your own handwriting, you can barely read it.?

The car is now far away at this point. The driver is never going back to apologize to you and atone for his mistakes.

The numbers in your head get blurrier as they slowly get replaced by an overwhelming flow of tears.

The stress. The adrenaline. The fear. The anger. The urgency. They’ve all caught up.

“C'MON!!!”

“YGS981?”?

“YSG819?”?*sniff*

“198?”

Nope. That ain’t it, chief.

You lean down on the steering wheel with your arms wrapped around your head.

Silence. Nothing but the sound of rain pouring on your car roof, and the murmurs of the radio station playing at minimum volume...

The sound of you silently weeping in defeat.

You missed your chance.

You May Need This

Wanna know why this ?20 pen is better than yours?

Well, it can write on any surface. Simple as that.

Wet, dry, greasy, rough, you name it.

It’s a bit more expensive, but that only means you will take better care of it. You’ll know where it is in your purse, even with your eyes closed.

More importantly, it’ll work when you need it the most.

Pop it open. Jot it down. Boom. It writes.

Every. Single. Time.

No banging it against hard surfaces. No lighter on the tip to make it work.

It just works. Always.

It's For Sale

So, there’s that.

Here, I’ll throw in a small notepad too, just in case.

That's free, don't worry about it.

That way, you’d have something decent to write on when you need to.

I have these in black and blue. Which one do you prefer?