Monday, October 23, 2006

A Strawberry Surprise

A few days ago a pen I had been using for a while ran out. It was a purple ball point pen that I started using right before I went to China in early July. I liked it because it wrote well, and the pen was small, so it fit comfortably in my pocket. It's always a slightly momentous occasion when I use up a pen. I throw it out triumphantly and congratulate myself for working so hard (or doodling so much) that I used up an entire pen. I also congratulate myself for not losing the pen before I had used all the ink.

Anyway, since I used up a pen, I figured it was time to bring another pen into my rotation. I chose a blue-inked retractable ball point pen that I purchased when I was in China. This pen is mostly purple, with some pink as well, and has almost stick-figure-esque drawings of several small bears. The pen reads "A Bear's Cub." I like the colors quite a bit, and it's comfortable to write with, as the pen is wide and the lower portion is covered with a pleasing pinkish plastic. In small print near the top of the pen is written, "When you are delighted, I am a good friend continuing it." Awesome.

So I used my new pen to jot a few notes. And then at some point I suddenly realized that it was scented! I was psyched. I've used scented pens before. In fact, I got a bunch of scented pens in China, and just the other day used a green pineapple-scented pen to grade Calculus exams. But scented pens are usually gel rollers or some variant thereof. This was ordinary ball point ink. So it was a happy surprise that this pen, in addition to being purple and pink and having bear cubs on it and a sappy Chinese-English phrase also was scented.

At first I couldn't figure out what the scent was. But the truth is that I didn't really care -- I was just so happy that it was scented. When I stopped to think about it I figured that it was either cotton candy or that it was a smell so cool that it didn't have a name. But after a few days as I thought about it more, I've come to the realization that it's strawberry. Yummy.

3 comments:

Sophie said...

On the subject of fruit: what ever happened to your mango tree? Did it fall victim to a Maine chill? Is it thriving indoors? I'm curious to know. :)

Dave said...

The mango tree is safely inside. It's in a good location in the room with our woodstove, so I hope that it will stay sufficiently warm over the winter. Reports vary on its overall health. I was thinking that it looked pretty good. But Doreen has suggested that it's not doing that well. At issue is a leaf that is a little bit brown. I suspect that the leaf got slightly eaten when it was still outside, and that this may be the cause of the brownness. Overall, the plant appears fairly sturdy. It's not very tall, but one wouldn't expect a mango to grow much given that the days are getting shorter. I'll try to post a picture of the mango sometime soon so that faithful readers of this blog can assess for themselves whether the mango is happy or not.

Anonymous said...

Where did you purchase the pen with the scented ink?

Ms K