Red Pen

         Pens are a writer's friend. Seriously! I have this red one. He's nice. He helps me come up with plot bunnies. He talks to me regularly. His name, well, I couldn't tell you. You'd laugh. I know you will. You won't laugh? Promise? I guess I can tell you, but you can't tell him I told you. You won't? Good. His name is Penny. I knew you'd laugh. You think it's a girl's name, don't you? Well Penny's all male. Well, as male as a pen can be. If you didn't know pens had genders, you're obviously not a writer. Writers live in their on worlds, and mine includes Penny keeps my secrets, and he helps me when I'm stuck within a writer's block. I don't chew on him as a return favor. We've had plenty of adventures, the two of us. But that's not what this story's about. This one's about Penny. Maybe I'll start at the beginning.

         I bought a package of black, blue and red pens at the local drugstore. Just an ordinary pack of pens, nothing unusual. Quite normal for me, actually. I'm a pen fiend by nature. I started the gel pen fad at my junior high in seventh grade. I wrote a whole novel with each chapter in a different pen. But back to the story. I got this ordinary pack of pens home and opened them. I randomly grabbed a red one out to the package. I wish I knew then that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I took the pen and twirled it into my hair to hold it while I proof read a short story for school. I started getting some random, yet good ideas to improve the story. I did these changes, and I got an "A" on that assignment. It took me a while to realize that the ideas came from Penny. As soon as I did though, I kept Penny close whenever I wrote. Penny and I had fun creating worlds that never had existed before, but as with anything that good, it never lasts. See, I decided to save him for my novel of many pens, for the chapter closest to my heart, and as the chapter started to close, he started to fade on me. He held on the best he could, the chapter was awesome, but once we finished it, Penny never wrote another word. It was devastating. In the time since, I have never found a pen that was as good of a writer as Penny was.

         So now Penny exists only in my memory, though now yours too. That's the thing about stories from the heart. They become part of someone else's too. Also, don't mock someone else's choice for a friend, for "a duck may be somebody's mother."