David Heiller
If I look a little older this week, you can blame it on my pen. Cindy and the kids gave me the pen on Father’s Day this year. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the pen has magical qualities. You can’t tell by looking at it. It’s thin and dark and heavy, a pretty plain fellow by Parker standards.
But when you write with it, you realize this is no ordinary Bic. It writes fast and smooth, with just the right balance. You feel important when you write with it. Like a rich businessman signing a million dollar check.
You feel like you know what you’re writing about, even if you don’t, which can be mighty helpful to a newspaper editor.
That’s where part of the magic lies, which I’ll mention later. But the first magical part comes with its attachment to me. Usually when I receive an expensive small gift like a pen or a knife, I lose it. Not on purpose of course, but it seems to happen.
This pen has already had a couple close calls. The first time, I left it on the counter of the Partridge Cafe on Thursday evening, August 9. It lay there like a $20 bill for 18 hours. How many people wrote checks with it, signed up for the hamburger stand with it, feeling its perfect balance and trim build? But when I came looking for it at noon the next day, there it still lay, like it was waiting for me.
It also vanished mysteriously two weekends ago from the junk drawer, where I keep it when I come home from work. Cindy hadn’t used it, nor had I or the kids. I even called my mother-in-law in Minneapolis, thinking she might have accidently taken it. How could it just disappear?
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| David with his pockets, loaded with pens and notebooks and slips of paper. He never missed an opportunity to write down a quote, even if it wasn't for the paper. He loved a good pen and he loved the leather pocket protector I bought him one birthday. The pens all eventually went missing. The pocket protector was filled with pens and slips of paper and was with him when he passed. |
Then Cindy remembered that a neighbor, Sylvia Larson, had stopped by to pay for an ad. I called Mrs. Larson to see if she might accidently have put the pen in the bottom of her purse. She said she would look. I didn’t hear from her for several days, and had given it up for lost. Cindy vowed that she would never buy me another expensive pen.
But Mrs. Larson drove up on Saturday. Sure enough, she had found the pen in the bottom of her purse. The pen almost jumped from her hand into mine, like the handshake of an old friend.
The other magical quality, like I mentioned earlier, is the confidence it instills in the user. It has the ability to weed out mistakes and sloppy reporting.
While it cowered in the bottom of Mrs. Larson’s purse, I covered an Askov School Board meeting, using some chewed up, leaky pen that had gone through the washing machine.
When the paper came out, several mistakes were found:
n Aria Budd discovered that Joan Anderson had become Joan Hansen in the first paragraph.
n Askov Superintendent Michael Hruby discovered that the fiscal agent for East Central Community Education Cooperative had changed from Sandstone to Askov school district.
n Finlayson Superintendent Stan Sjodahl discovered that a school bus ruling to the state Commissioner of Education had changed against District 570.
It’s not the first time I’ve made a mistake in an article, not by a long shot. But three in one article?
It had to be the pen.
I hate errors in a newspaper. Everyone at the paper does. But sometimes those goof-ups just shouldn’t happen. Like mistaking Joan Hansen for Joan Anderson. I know the difference. Arla Budd, our typesetter, knows the difference. Hazel Serritslev, our proofreader, knows the difference. But the wrong Joan slipped past us all.
Blame it on a lousy pen.
One thing is happily clear: Now that I’ve found my good pen, you can rest assured that there will be no more missteaks hear.
