At What Age

[pen2paper]

pre-kindergarten, so age 4.

vividly recall making bubbles in the Peacock Blue ink with the Sheaffer Snorkle given to me by my mother..

...now that I think of it, some ## years later, she probably figured I couldn't make it work, or had access to the ink - Hah!

[Shutterbug57]

I was 7 or 8. There was a vending machine at school and it had cheap, as in really cheap, fountain pens. They had cardboard feeds and were not refillable. I guess they were designed so you could not easily shoot ink at the girls, but if you flicked your wrist, you could still fling ink.

 

Anyway, I wanted one badly, but my parents thought it was frivolous and said no - IIRC, they were $1.25 or so. Me being me, I did not eat lunch for a few days and presto chango, I had the coin for the pen. When my mom saw it, well it was not a good day. But my mom worked at the school in the library and not too long after I had gotten my pen, my teacher was eating with mom and made a casual comment on how much better my penmanship was with the FP. Problem solved, I got my school FPs funded through the remainder of primary school.

 

They did not have such a machine when I hit junior high, or by then such things had fallen from favor. Either way, I was out of FPs unless I could borrow one occassionally. It was not until I was a senior in high school that I got a real FP. My dad got me a Sheaffer Targa - matte black when they first came out. I used that pen in high school (part year) and all through college. It was the pen I first took to work when I got out of college. I still have it, although I did buy a medium nib for it along the was as the fine was not really to my liking.

[Sailor Kenshin]

A vending machine containing fountain pens? Pure awesome.

[superfreeka]

A vending machine containing fountain pens? Pure awesome.

 

Agreed. Wow.

[N2theBreach]

There were three times when I started using fountain pens.

 

3) In my mid-'50s. Coming up on a year ago, now. Got hooked and can probably count on my fingers the number of times I've used a ballpoint since.

 

2) 11 years old(?). Scheaffer or Scripto FPs were the had-to-have fad. Probably lasted a year or less.

 

1) 3 or 4 years old, just as the world was making the switch to ballpoints. My mother somehow got a bunch of pens from people that had made the switch and she let us play with them. Seems like we played with those pens for months. <Sigh>. If I only had those pens today!

Edited March 9, 2013 by N2theBreach

[PocketNotebook]

Around 13-14 years old.