I enjoy writing with fountain pens to the point that I can’t write anything by hand without one. It wasn’t something that had always been true, as I used to be fine with doing work using some pencil, and usually a different one from the day prior, since I was terrible at keeping them in my pocket. I think the first time I ever used a fountain pen was when I found a ten-pack of Zebra disposable fountain pens in my house and decided to use them (which I still have). For me, having a “nice” pen for the first time made it so that I never lost it, since every time I got up, I checked my pockets to make sure it was still there. Eventually, my brother got a nice fountain pen, a TWSBI Eco, and it seemed like a good time for me to get an upgrade, too. The only problem was that I, A, had no money, and B, had no clue where to get one.

I hit a lucky break when I was at my friend’s house and stumbled upon his brother’s box of fountain pens, and my god, it was a gold mine: there was a calligraphy pen, a Parker 51, a Montblanc Meisterstrück, an assortment of calligraphy stub nibs, an innumerable amount of ink bottles, and at the bottom of the pile, a Lamy Safari. Unfortunately, my first fountain pen was not the $800 Montblanc, but instead the humble clear Lamy Safari with a stainless-steel medium-size nib. Even still, it seemed like a 24-karat nib with a black resin body and gold accents to me. However weird it may sound, the first day I used that pen in class, it brought me literal joy when I used it. I used that Lamy Safari every single day for the rest of my eighth-grade year, and continued to use it until about the quarter mark of freshman year, when I decided that it somehow became not good enough for me, and felt the need to get a new pen. I went to the Fountain Pen Hospital in Manhattan to get it, as I could try it out and see if I liked it. After a bit of testing out pens, I landed on the Monteverde Dakota, a small, all-metal pen made for everyday writing. This time, that same pure joy from the pen was there, but even more so. The nib felt like it moved across the page with zero friction, the weight of the metal was perfect, not too heavy, not too light, and balanced towards the front; I was again in love with a pen. I used that pen every day until halfway through the year, where I again felt a strange need to get a new one. Again I returned to the Fountain Pen Hospital, except this time I knew what I was looking for, and an infinite amount more knowledge. I ended up with a Pilot Elite 95 with a fine 14-karat gold nib, which I now use every day.