It’s happened to everyone. You sit down at that familiar desk and you pull your notebook and books out of your bag and place them in pleasing geometric order on the table, and then you pull out your one and only pen. It’s your only pen because, if you’re being honest, you really only need one - it writes well, it still has plenty of ink, and you don’t need to haul around that pencil case from high school - and you start to illuminate and embellish the top margin of your fresh notebook page as the rest of the class floods in. That guy who sits next to you does the same thing he does every day and sits down and takes out his books and notebooks and then pauses. You pause and watch out of your peripherals as that guy triple-checks his bag and sighs heavily, and you look up as he leans over to you.
“Hey,” he says. “Can I borrow a pen?”
You look down at your single perfect pen, and then you shrug and say “sorry, man. This is my only one.”  And even though you’re the one who came to class prepared with all the necessary materials, you still feel rather bad and miss that gigantic high school pencil case that had a broken zipper and graphite marks all over it from being stuffed to the brim with pencils and ballpoints and gel pens, because if you still had that huge thing you could reach right in there and respond with “green or purple?” 
I was a kid who, if asked for a pen or pencil to borrow, would always lend said implement and not ask for it back. I was delighted when my things were returned to me, but at the same time if someone borrowed my pink gel pen and forgot it was mine and never gave it back it wasn’t a big deal. I think it’s this past tendency that causes the residual personal disappointment I feel whenever I have to shake my head and admit that no, I don’t have a pen you can borrow. I just grabbed this one off my desk right before I ran out the door to half-jog, half-stalk to class, and I’m lucky I remembered one for me. If you had asked me for a pen in class six years ago, you would have been rewarded with a rainbow spectrum of colors to choose from and usually 3 different ink consistencies. These days I rarely remember to tie my shoes let alone bring more than one pen to a class, so I’m sorry. Ask the girl who doesn’t have pasta sauce on her shirt, who brushed her hair and put a headband in this morning - she probably has one for you. 

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