Back To School Shopping

Back to School Shopping


Ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, ballpoint stick, ballpoint, erasable, felt tip, fountain and gel ink pens can be found in almost any large department or office supply store here in Delaware. A few days prior to beginning my first semester here as a PhD student of Physics I went with a colleague of mine to go buy some school supplies. I roamed the “Back To School” section at the local K-Mart scanning the name brand, color and style of each and every pen and was overwhelmingly surprised. It made me reflect on my childhood in Mardan, a rural village in northwestern Pakistan where I grew up and went to school. There were no pens for sale in stores; We had to make our own.
In grade school if my pen supply was running low I would stop by the riverbank on my way home from school and collect a few sprigs of bamboo-like wood. We call it nul in Pushto. I would search for long mature pieces that had turned yellow and drop them in my book bag one by one. Once I reached home I would climb up our ladder to the rooftop and lay them out to dry in the hot sun. Writing with a pen, while still damp with sap, would slowly bend into a funny shape and disrupt the ink flow. The bamboo needed two days to reach a brittle state.
After the bamboo was free from sticky sap, I would cut each stem along the seams with a kitchen knife and end up with a six-inch hollow tube. In my house, locating a sharp knife proved to be the biggest challenge throughout this whole process. My parents used to hide them from my brothers and I so we wouldn’t use them for any form of destructive entertainment. We enjoyed slicing the braided strands of leaves which were our bed frames. If I found a knife it was usually somewhere way up high.
I could customize my own pen by the size of the slit I carved along the edge of my wood. I used the knife to shave the end of the wood piece until it formed a sharp pointy slope. Next, I’d cut off the very tip to create a slightly blunt edge. Then I usually carved a narrow slit at the end that would keep the ink from gushing out. In K-Mart they were classified as either medium, fine, extra fine, or bold.
Ink was sold separately. We bought ink powder in a tea bag for less than a penny. At school we would add some water to the black powder and stir it around in our small plastic ink pots. Our ink had a charcoal base and could be washed off with water. Since paper was also absent in stores we would write on both sides of a wooden plank. If the powder was very soft and fine the ink my writing would turn out smooth. But if the powder was clumpy my writing would also look clumpy. Either way I could easily wash it off.
I take pleasure in the art of making pens. Each class had an expert in making them and I was the pen man. One day I made about eight in a row because I thought it was fun. I carried the bunch in my black cloth bag that my mother had hand sewed for me. In school we usually put our bags on the ground where we sat taking notes. Before the teacher arrived we would engage in a little horseplay to kill time. Not surprisingly, one of my classmates trampled on my bag and broke the entire batch. I was so angry I yelled at him for his carelessness. To try and compensate for my loss he gave me one of his poorly made pens. After I cooled down I realized it was no big deal. Although my pens took two whole days to dry, they only took ten minutes to make. On the way home from school that day I took a detour by the riverbank to hunt for some good wood.
Fortunately, there were no pens for sale in stores in Mardan when I was a boy. It taught me to be self-sufficient and to make do with what I have instead of always thirsting for more. I can have a simple practical lifestyle and be perfectly content.