treasure

The other day I was searching through my desk drawer, scrambling for a writing utensil in order to write down a phone number for an interview. I used a pink highlighter. But when I went to re-organize the drawer, I found an old friend: the Quality Inn pen.

This is, without a doubt, the best pen I have ever been privileged to have in my care. I picked it up at the Quality Inn in Tacoma (or some indistinguishable suburb of Tacoma) in March 2005. Alyssa was actually the first one to find it, since she had been staying at the hotel two days prior to my arrival. We were there for the 3A state basketball tournament, in which the Hanford High boys team was competing. Alyssa went over with her mom early that week, and once the team proved they would be sticking around for more than one game, my mom brought me over and we took over responsibility for Alyssa.

She told me that the hotel pens were of an unusually high quality, ironically, and I would be a fool to not snag one before the trip was over. The pen I have now is actually snag No. 2, since the first one fell out of my purse during the prom dress shopping excursion. I used it to take all my notes in coverage of the tournament, including locker room interviews and signing myself into the Tacoma Dome through the press entrance. Yeah, it was that cool.

The pen is white, with a bold but friendly green lettering down the middle with a phone number, in case I was writing a check one day and suddenly got the urge to make a hotel reservation. The cap is also green, and fits snugly onto both the end and tip of the pen. I like caps that fit snugly. The ink is black, and confident. None of this faded grey or sporadic ink flow. This baby is solid, and almost always works the first time on impact. No licking or coaxing required.

But I think what I love most about this particular pen is its ebb and flow in the past three years. I usually only have it for about a month until it gets lost in a drawer or at the bottom of the handbag of that season. Once I found it in a roommate's cup of writing utensils because they had borrowed it months earlier and forgotten to return it. It's probably disappeared a dozen times since I've had it. But it always comes back, and at the most delightful times. It's just nice to know that true treasure is never really lost, it just changes hands for a while.