Review: small town pen

the real meaning of Clipmas

This is the LAMY Aion.

You knew him once, but you haven’t thought about him in years.

Not since you left Cozyton for college, in fact.

You broke your father’s heart when you didn’t come back. He’d long dreamed that you would return to take over the family’s dust farm, but you had your own dreams.

Dreams of an exciting career doing marketing for Big Corporate, of saying things like “let’s circle back on that when I have more bandwidth,” of walking down the bustling streets of Probably Toronto For Budget Reasons juggling a cup of coffee and your phone as Mr. Jensen congratulates you on the last client presentation.

Dreams of a life that you’d share with your high-flying fiancé, LAMY 2000.

LAMY 2000 is nothing like what you grew up with. He’s smart, distinctive, and sophisticated. Sure, LAMY 2000 never has time to show up for your events, but that’s just because he’s busy with Undefined Business Stuff. It’s just how things are when you’re trying to make it in Probably Toronto For Budget Reasons. You understand.

It’s the life you’ve always wanted. You are happy, you think.

But then Mr. Jensen tells you he needs you to go back to Cozyton, because Big Corporate is going to foreclose on Cozyton’s tombstone museum. “It is not making enough profits,” Mr. Jensen says. “We need to foreclose. Business.”

And so now you are back home the week before Christmas, tasked with delivering the bad news to the museum’s new proprietor. You knock on its sagging door, anxiety growing in your stomach. The owner answers and you can’t hide your surprise at the familiar face. It’s LAMY Aion.

The meeting doesn’t go well.

You go home and vent to your parents.

“Now, I won’t hear any of that,” your dad says. “LAMY Aion is a good man. He may not be like your fancy big-city 2000s and Safaris, but he came back to this town to try to save the tombstone museum and that is a good thing in my book.” He gives you a piercing look. “Besides, who do you think has been helping me out during dust season since you left?”

You go to your old childhood room and sulk. But you also look at LAMY Aion with different eyes the next time you see him.

You notice little things you missed before.

You notice that his barrel is made of lightweight metal, brushed so that there is a nice texture to it. It is a good, solid green—a small-town green, not some fancy Probably Toronto For Budget Reasons green that goes to gallery openings and knows what the word “gauche” means. It is a green that helps out at the dust farm and sponsors Cozyton’s Christmas pageant even though the tombstone museum isn’t making any money.

You see his stout, understated grip. There are no scallops to make you hold him a certain way. There are no sharp metal things that dig into your fingers unless you hold him exactly right. His grip is just there, being dependable, never being too busy with Undefined Business Stuff.

You consider how his cap snaps on. It does not have any industry-leading slip ‘n seal technology to prevent dry-out. It does not engage any spring-loaded mechanism to shut off the ink flow from the nib. There are no magnets that lock it into place.

It just snaps on. Maybe it isn’t exciting. But it’s honest.

You think about his clip. It isn’t designed to look like a quill or engineered so that it recesses when you twist the section. It doesn’t even have a little wheel on the end.

No one’s going to look at his clip and think how lucky you are to be with him. But it’s going to clip the pen to stuff, and isn’t that the real meaning of Clipmas?

You think about how he uses LAMY’s interchangeable nib system, so his nib can be basically any nib you like. You can project all of your ideal nib characteristics onto him and he won’t mind. Good old Aion, you think.

You apologize for being too harsh. He apologizes for getting angry. You take a walk to discuss things as the first snow falls.

You get to know LAMY Aion again, or maybe truly for the first time, over hot chocolate and a snowball fight. He tells you about his passion for tombstones. You have an idea. You make some calls. It works.

You call Mr. Jensen and tell him you will not foreclose on the tombstone museum because the citizens of Cozyton have banded together to save it. “Okay, sure, whatever,” he says. “I meant to tell you we didn’t actually have the power to do that anyway. You work in marketing.”

You call LAMY 2000 to tell him it’s over, but he does not pick up because he is busy with Undefined Business Stuff. Eh, he gets it, you think.

You have a wonderful Christmas at home with your parents and LAMY Aion. And when all the presents have been opened and he surprises you by getting down on one knee, you say yes.

Your parents applaud. He leans in.

Suddenly the door flies open. Uniformed guards stomp in, guns drawn, as everyone looks on in shock. “This is the metaphor police!” shouts the man in charge, his eyes wild. “You took the metaphor too far! Gross!”

You end the pen review abruptly.

OTHER STUFF

MEANWHILE, IN REALITY: whoo boy that was a weird one. But if “tombstone museum” was intriguing, there is a very nice funeral museum in Vienna that is worth a visit if you’re in town.

BOOK: The Great Leader Detective Agency Prepares For Glory And Then, A Bit Later, For Ice-Cream Cake is available for (free) pre-read at this link until it is published in August or we run out of pre-read spots, whichever comes first. A dictator solves mysteries. 100% orange cat guaranteed. More info here.

PROGRESS CHECK: We’re doing pretty good here on our review queue!

Of course, we’ll have others to discuss. I’m just proud of actually reviewing the ones I teased at the start of the year for once.