2026-02-13 I lost one of my fucking Waterman pens. The light blue one. I don’t care and also it makes me sad. I guess someone must have picked it up where it slipped out of my cargo-pants side pocket in Woodmans. I didn’t ask at the service counter. Hopefully whoever picked it up or ends up with it enjoys it. Getting sad about losing a fountain pen is either a proxy for grief about something else, or else it’s just exactly what it is. I don’t even know anymore.
Then I found it again. Like a liar and a thief assuming all others are liars and thieves, I had assumed someone woulda picked it up out of the bottled tea aisle at Woodmans and kep’ it for theirselves, but they didn’t. Someone had taken it to the customer service counter which I discovered after convincing myself to get over my awkward avoidance and just go in and ask for it.
"You can go get a carwash aftwards, just do this one thing you don't want to do," I told myself.
It was sitting behind the counter next to someone’s drink. I showed them the pink one and said, “I think that's my pen. See? It looks just like this one.” I think they maybe were gonna keep it if no one came back for it, but I did, and they gave it to me and I was happy about that and they were nice about it.
Then I got out into the car and started testing it for damage. There was a time when it was out of my sight, out of my possession. Like, can I tell if the nib is microscopically more spread out now? Lol of course it is not, that’s fucking ridiculous except this is how my fucking mind works. I don’t know if worrying about utterly absurdly insanely beyond trivial shit like that is a proxy for worrying about something big and important that I (also) can’t control, or if I’m just a dumb shit.
Either way, I’m glad I got my third Waterman pen back. The band is back together, Blackie and Pinkie and Bluey. Everyone made it home OK. Everyone’s safe. Everyone made it home safe.