Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

I am old school in a lot of ways. Growing up, my Mom stressed the importance of penmanship, and I used a fountain pen for the longest time.

In fact, to this day, I still treasure my Parkers, Sheaffers and Mont Blancs (and even my Hero pens, for those that remember). And I still don’t understand what the big deal about ball-point pens is (if anything, they encourage bad handwriting, and I’d much rather use a gel pen if I have to use a non-fountain pen).

Anyway, it’s been a while since my reserve of ink ran out. And I still am quite nostalgic about using ink from ink bottles, which is an art in itself. Not to mention Turquoise and Persian blues, my two favorite colors for penmanship.

So, I called up the local staples and asked them if they had any fountain pen ink. The girl at the other end had trouble understanding my question, let alone answering it, so I gave up after five minutes of me trying to explain to her that I was not looking for printer ink. Delana suggested that we go to an Office Depot nearby, so I decided to give that a try.

Ah, the joy.

The conversation went something like this –

Me: Hi. I’m looking for ink. Well, fountain pen ink.

She: Huh? Ink?

Me: Well, yes, ink? For pens?

She (quite confused): Huh? Ink? Pens?

Me (worried that she is going to repeat every line I say): Yes. Ink. For pens.

She: I do not know if we carry that.

Me: Oh?

She: You could check in aisle 4. That’s where we have all pen related stuff.

Me: Do you think you’d have Turquoise or Persian?

She: Huh?

Me: Never mind. We’ll go look.

And then, she proceeded to exchange weird glances with a colleague, looking at me like I was from Mars or something. Anyway, we head over to the aisle that she directed us to, and what do we find? Pens. Lots of pens. But not even a single fountain pen (later on, we did find a handful of Mont Blancs and Watermans locked up all the way across the store).

And ink? Good luck.

And then, a friendly man who works at the store shows up, asking us if he could help. He tells me that they probably have some standard ink cartridges, but nothing even approaching ink bottles or Turquoise. He recommended that I look at Bankhardts, but I wasn’t so sure. So, I settled for generic European-styled cartridges for blue ink, but I wasn’t really a happy camper.

I had almost forgotten about it when this afternoon, we headed out to the mall to grab some food when we stumbled upon this store called Appointments. Lo and behold! They had not just a few but several fountain pens. What more, the guy running the place even knew what I was talking about.

And of course, I asked him if he had any good Turquoise or Persian ink — and to my indescribable joy, he said yes. While he did not have any bottles, he carried some cartridges (it was the last pack, in fact) of Turquoise blue. I couldn’t help but tell him about my earlier experiences at the so-called “stationery” stores — and he knew, of course, and we laughed about it.

But I cannot help but wonder. I’m fairly certain that while fountain pens aren’t exactly new, they aren’t exactly old either. Are there really so few folks who use these things that most people working at stationery stores do not even know about them, let alone stock them?

I’m still in my mid-twenties, and I’ve never considered myself old — but for the first time, I felt old and out of place (and out of time). A dying breed from another era, that is what I am reminded of.