My husband is a fountain pen fanatic too but unlike me he was brought up in Scotland. Here's what he has to say:
In those long-ago days when I was a kid teachers took it upon themselves to limit the writing instruments we could use. Horrible dip pens were permissible as were pencils and latterly fountain pens. Ballpoint pens were, it appeared, instruments of Satan himself and were viewed with deep distaste which made them all the more attractive to us kids. If you turned up with a clicky ballpoint and used it to make an irritating noise it was sure to be confiscated.
Most of our school work was done with a pencil. I liked pencils – still do. They allowed you to erase and correct your work, a handy attribute. And, of course, you could take a trip out to use the sharpener on the teacher's desk. Some of us, mostly boys, had a prized pocketknife with which we preferred to sharpen our pencils. You'd probably be expelled for bringing a pocketknife to school now but it was completely accepted then. I would stand over the waste paper basket whittling away at my pencil to produce a needle-sharp point. I loved the smell of the cedar-wood shavings of the pencil.
For certain exercises we had to use a fountain pen. Most of the better fountain pens were really expensive. My parents weren't well-off so there was no Conway Stewart or Blackbird for me. Some of the other kids had those enviable instruments but I – and most other kids – had cheap Platignums or Queensways. My first Platignums were lever fillers followed later by cartridge pens. Whichever they were they shared certain properties: a tendency to leave the user with inky fingers and even to drop a blob of ink on the page, a true disaster!
After I "lost" or rejected a couple of these fountain pens from hell my mother shopped around and found an Osmiroid. This was still a cheap pen but much better made. It came with an array of nibs and was intended to be used as a calligraphy pen. I settled on the "fine soft" nib and didn't use any of the others. I think I was eleven when I got it. It lasted me until I left school, never once inking me or my work. I wish I still had it.
By time I hit high school ballpoint pens were permissible. I had a succession of cheap ballpoints, never one of the Parkers that the snobby kids had. I never respected my ballpoints. Unlike the fountain pen, they were throwaway trash.
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