My mother does a lot of crossword puzzles, or at least she did when I was younger, so her writing mechanism of choice was a mechanical pencil — the yellow ones with the twisty tops, not the the grey ones with the clicky erasers.  She only writes in small capital letters.

My father used to use those cheap plastic fountain pens but switched to the gel pen in the late 90′s.  He always encouraged us to write in cursive, but he usually wrote in some connected print hybrid himself.

Elizabeth Dunbar from the 7th grade used those Pilot Precise pens with the needle points and had the penmanship envied by all.

My friend Soli had every gel pen color imaginable. 

Stacy wrote with a Dr. Grip, but she thought babies were deposited into the girl by the boy, so really, she turned out to be an idiot.

Jessica, from down the street, favored the impractically dull but colorfully painted wooden pencil.

My first boyfrend only wrote in those plastic Bic pens he could buy 10 for a dollar.

My brother refused to write with anything at all.  This continues to be one of his greater downfalls.

What does this mean really?  Can I psycho analyze these people by their stationary choices? My mother makes mistakes so she needs to be able to erase?  My father is smooth with a slight girlish flair?  What does that even mean?  Nothing.  I admire a person who knows what pen they want to write with.  I don’t know why, but it’s possibly because I have no idea what mine is.  It’s an ongoing search that seems to be delayed by passing whims.  I write the neatest with ballpoint, but I love a good fountain pen.  A weighty pen feels awesome in my hand, but why pay $45 for a pen I will lose and/or move on from in days.

I would love to say that I desire to do great things, or at least strive for world peace.  But no.  I want very simple things in life.  The perfect pen that makes my handwriting look like a computer did it.   A day-planner laid out in the exact way I feel is most efficient.  A pad of paper that makes ink shine, that won’t soak up all my ink, and that wins Oscars.

The problem is, my standards are impossibly high and impossibly erratic.  I will never have a choice pen because I’ll never know what I want.  I’ll never have the perfect pen because it does not exist.  I maintain the belief that a good pen will solve all my problems, and unfortunately I am finding out this is not how the world works.  Just because I have the same pen that Jed Bartlett uses does not mean that one day I will be POTUS.

Having a day-planner will not guarantee appointments.  A pen will not give me flawless penmanship.  And a pad of paper won’t write itself.

And yet, here I am, still looking.