Whether it was the singular cause or a contributor to my obsession with writing implemets, the Parker Jotter has been a part of my life since I was 8 or 9 years old. It was a pen my parents had grown up with as well, and in my family it was a typical gift given to kids for some sort of scholastic achievement or related special occasion, like graduating the fourth grade. My parents gave them to me for such events and also gave them to their friends' kids. It was a clasy, relatively neutral, and inexpensive gift that you could hand out indiscriminately to boys or girls. Plus, they came with a snazzy little gift box.
While I was not yet a student nor practitioner of the scientific method or deductive reasoning, I just knew there had to be something special about a pen that sold for a whopping $3.00 plus or minus some change. After all, with that much money I could buy multiple 10-packs of Papermates or Bics and start my own pen-based bartering/monetary system with them. So these Jotters had to be the bees' knees, right? Right.
They wrote smoothly. And didn't get all stuttery in their ink flow or dry up in spurts and require me to give my manuscript an Indian burn in the margin to get them going again. They didn't quietly explode and leave little ink bombs for me to discover upon uncapping them. Instead they had a continuously open mouth from which the tip of the cartridge emerged. So sure was the Jotter of its stability that it dared you to pocket it uncapped. Speaking of the ink cartridge, it was cool in itself, resembling a rocket of sorts. A depleted one often turned into my G.I. Joes' doomsday missile and became the basis of many an action figure adventure.
But the Parker Jotter was still a "special occasion" pen, for me, to be worn as an accessory like a tie or cufflinks or to be used for signing "important" things like birthday cards or endorsing gift-money checks. They really didn't get that regular a use.
The Jotter, and ink pens in general, took a backseat in my writing tool use and collecting when I went to college. As an engineering student doing a lot of equations, graphing, and drafting, I quickly developed a fetish for mechanical pencils, which became my primary tools at that time because of the need to erase. The Jotter made a cameo or two. Once, when I was home for Christmas holiday, and helping my mom clean out a closet, I came across a stash of things she had hoarded to use as gifts for my cousins that she had never used. Among the sundry knicknacks and toys were 6 pristine in-box Jotters! In their stately maroons and navy blues, they were shiny and untouched. I seized them in the name of jealousy.
The Jotter didn't experience a resurgence in my usage or collecting until I graduated and got my first job. There was a drug store in the mini-mall across from work where I would stop on the way home for snacks and or the odd mechanical pencil. While looking for a Zebra M-605, I came across something I had never seen (or noticed) before: a stainless steel Parker Jotter. I had never seen anything cooler for the same price. I bought three. I couldn't drive home fast enough to open it and test it out. It looked awesome. It weighed and balanced in a way I liked. And it wrote as well as its chromatic counterparts. I had my new weapon of choice.
If I could, I would have worn a bandolier of the stainless steel Jotters. Their all-metal exterior construction inspired me with all sorts of MacGuyver-esque ideas. I used my SS Jotter to stab open the tape on the seams of packages. I figured I could use them to slay the undead via some sort of modified crossbow (yeah yeah, silver, just let it go). Choking of food and the Heimlich maneuver proves ineffective? A properly placed SS Jotter, with cartridge handily removed of course, could be used to perform that impromptu field tracheotomy AND serve as a windpipe until the medics arrive.
I'll never understand why the Swiss Army bothers with those glorified letter openers when they could have this pen!
To be continued...
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