When I was little we couldn’t write with ballpoint pens in school; only fountain pens were allowed. Ballpoints would ruin our handwriting, we were told. And looking around today, I can see that this is so!
So I stopped at the stationer’s in Berwyn to buy a fountain pen before starting back to school, and the big featured item was the Esterbrook Fill’er Up No-Leak Space Pen. It was the same kind of fountain pen used in NASA missiles. The kind gentleman at the counter showed me how to fill it up from an ink bottle, using the little screw-plunger doohickey at the end.
“That’s right, miss,” he said, “once you fill up this pen, you’ll never have to fill it again.”
Then I took it out of the bottle and twisted the plunger again to tighten it. And I sprayed blue-black ink all over the poor gentleman’s face!
Was my face red!