I’m new to the pen community, although I’ve loved fountain pens since I was in high school. An exceptionally bright kid from Romania arrived at my high school and I saw that he was doing his physics problems using a fountain pen! I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen so I struck a conversation with him about pens. That was it for me: hooked on fountain pens for life. I saved my high school graduation money and bought my first serious pen, a thin, metal barreled Montblanc that was great, albeit a bit scratchy. Ever since then, I’ve been collecting pens over the past almost 40 years just for my own enjoyment. I’ve never been to a pen show or communicated with others in the community and so I thought I’d give it a go, especially after I received some encouragement from my students who I’ve converted into fountain enthusiasts by gifting them their first fountain pens (usually a Pilot Metropolitan or a TWSBi or a LAMY Safari). That’s it for now. Messages welcomed!