Pen and Pencil OCD

This morning on NPR, on “Talk of the Nation”, there was a segment on OCD—Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder—that got me thinking about some of my own proclivities and habits. God knows I’m not cleaning anything all of the time, and I don’t worry about leaving the iron or the stove on once I leave the house. I rarely iron, and cook slightly more often. If I’ve forgotten to leave food for the cats, they can live off their fat for a few hours.

But should you visit me and need a pen or pencil to jot something down, I can ask: do you want a pen or a pencil? OK, a pen. What color ink do you want? Gel or ball point? Thick or thin? Click or cap? Would a marker be better? What color? Thick or thin? Oh, you’d rather have a pencil? Mechanical or regular? Number 2 or 3? .5mm or .7mm? Do you need a separate eraser? No as many choices, but I’ve got a few.

How on earth did I get this way? I went all through school with a few pencils and maybe one pen, which was probably a fountain pen in those dark ages. In my 20’s I never had any money, so probably would have had one or two pens of the BIC ilk, and maybe a pencil.

Then I got married to husband #2, and we moved to Grand Island to a fairly big house. There was room for me to have a desk, a real luxury. I kept all kinds of things in that lovely teak rolltop desk—pictures, decks of cards, odds and ends that can’t find another place, and oh yes, a few pens and pencils. There were three boys living in the house for the next year, and four boys for a few more years after that. Two were my stepsons, both of them considerably older than my “innocent” little boys. OK, that’s the background.

We’d leave a pen near the phone, which was just a few steps from my desk. The phone pen wasn’t tied down, as in a bank, so it always disappeared. Not sometimes. Always. The go to place for a pen was my desk. When I was growing up, my mother’s desk was off limits to us kids. Just as her purse was. I think I managed to maintain the sanctity of my purse with the four boys (and if I’m wrong, I don’t want to know!), but I could get nowhere insisting that my desk was not open to all.

Two years after we moved there, one of my stepsons decided to live with his mother in another city, so he stayed there after his summer visit instead of coming back. We realized we could have a bedroom for each of the “little” boys instead of them having to share a room. Cleaning up my stepson’s room was a nightmare. I won’t go into all the gory details; suffice it to say that in that ~10’ x 10’ room I unearthed 84 (that’s eighty four) pens and pencils! Yes, I counted them. They were under the rug, under the bed, in underwear drawers, in the closet; indeed, there wasn’t a place that I didn’t find a writing implement.

Now I’m the one with 84 pens and pencils, and perhaps more. I must add that I go with my company to trade shows a couple of times a year, and pens are one of the tchotchkes that companies give away. But still. I have a lot of pens. I do crossword puzzles and Sudoku, and I might do them upstairs or downstairs, so I have to have pencils upstairs and downstairs. I have three handsets for my phone, so I need pens where there are phones. Fine. You can probably understand that. But why do I need so many pens and pencils?! It’s nuts! It’s crazy! It’s…it’s…well, it’s obsessive/compulsive, isn’t it?

In my defense, I don’t spend much money on pencils or pens. Most pens come from trade shows, even a very few mechanical pencils. I don’t use regular wooden pencils—I’d have to keep sharpening them. I’m not hurting anyone, it doesn’t take me extra time to nourish my obsession.

Confession is so good for the soul! Just don’t deprive me of my pens and pencils, and I’ll be good. I promise.