Pens By: Adam Lederman

"Spanish Class" By: Isabella Kreidler

Pens By Adam Lederman

My fellow students and teachers, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to understand that I do not shy away from controversy. On the contrary, I will embrace it, and run towards it with open arms. I will take a stand on any issue at any time, I will not budge. You have asked me how I feel about pens. All right, now I will write about pens.

If when you say “pen” you mean the annoyance of a log which rolls off desks taking everything with it, a captain going down with his ship; if you mean the unerasable poison banned from standardized testing, made obsolete by the invention of the No. 2 pencil; if you mean the scourge of left-handers everywhere, capped off for safety, locked up in drawers and sentenced to irrelevance; if you mean the fragile plastic tube that snaps, dripping venom from a snake’s tooth, the permanent ink which stains papers and clothes, a wound bleeding through suit pockets and purses, wreaking havoc, destruction and waste, yea, requiring in-house surgery to remove, a task force armed with rubbing alcohol and a towel - then certainly I will not sign for it.

But, if when you say “pen” you mean the permanent ink which glides along a page, each stroke filled with artful intention and purpose; if you mean the utility used by all to sign here, to sketch a scribble of our names to make ourselves known, to make ourselves permanent; if you mean the utility which lays on desks, propped up by cupholders, waiting patiently to be used, to write our letters, our books, our laws, translating ideas into reality; if you mean the chisel used by giants to inscribe the Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Rights of Man, etching ourselves rights; if you mean the single greatest weapon, the golden sword sent from God and pulled from the mound by King Arthur, the scepter used by Kings and Queens to start and end all wars, guiding our people’s history, from the fall of Rome to the collapse of the American Confederate South to the end of Nazi Germany, empires struck by ink; if you mean the tool crafted by the ancient Egyptians out of bamboo, the quill feathers carefully plucked from fine birds by the Europeans and gently dipped in jars of ink, the steel point pen, the fountain pen, the ballpoint pen, each a staple of their time, used to document the history of our ancestors so that we may learn from them - then I will sign off on it.

This is my permanent stance. I will not erase it. I will not compromise.