It is tragic that our children aren't taught to write with fountain pens.

[JVS]

36. I got my hands on a fountain pen in 3rd grade.

My mom had one with refillable cartridges and I played around with it. Penmanship had never been my strong suit, but with the fountain pen a lot of the rules of cursive handwriting made good sense since cursive handwriting is based on the kinds of strokes one can make with a traditional pen.

One day, I took it to school and was sitting in class outlining the reading for history, outlining being one of the skills they were teaching us that year. As I sat there reading I was absentmindedly flipping the pen back and forth rapidly. Eventually I looked up and saw that I had spattered black ink between myself and another pupil sitting one row over and one row ahead of me. Not only were there large ink spots on the floor, but quite a few on her chair and sweater. It was a long time before I used a fountain pen away from home again. In 7th grade art class they taught us to use calligraphy pens though.