Your Pad Or Mine?
My name is Cliff and I have a stationery fetish.
I have spoken about this to my friends (spiral)note(pad)ably Wendy, who is part of my support network.
I say support, she’s fucking useless actually, because I talk about the benefits of sharpening pencils with a knife to give a harder edge and I can see her glazing over and getting ideas, because she’s the same as me.
I write this on a day when I was scoring legal pads in an undisclosed Staples in New York for Meg, who expressed an interest here.
It wasn’t the full-sized legal pads she craved - it was the smaller ones; the almost A5 ones - junior legal. Barely legal. Anyway, I got them.
There’s a great line in You’ve Got Mail (what?!) where Tom Hanks emails Meg Ryan, fantasising about buying her a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils.
I bought a box of pencils there, too. You can’t buy #2 pencils with eraser tips in the UK (despite the comedy potential of asking for a “Number two and rubbers”), so I bought a whole box of forty eight. Honestly my little face as I took them up to the till…
Number Two pencils rock. They are soft. They wear down before they look all gnarled and haggard. They are impermanent. They wrote this, before it went up online, where these words remain. There’s an amount of “going, going… here” about it.
So it’s with no shame that I admit my stationery fetish and that I stand up to be counted, and (with any luck) indexed, laminated and filed.
I am proud to be, even in this technological and logical age, among a growing number of office supply enthusiasts, who are not only marching on, but bringing reinforcements.
Related posts that deal with sharpening pencils with knives*:
Paperblog Writer
Five Stupid Things On My Desk
*and other signs that I’ve been blogging too long
Tomorrow: What am I reading?
April 26th, 2007 at 8:12 am
I’ll be thrilled to be your stationery fix in teh US, Cliff. Just let me know where to send ths stuff.
April 26th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Can I smell your box of pencils please Cliff?
My name is Sooz and I’m a stationery addict *twitch*
April 26th, 2007 at 10:42 am
I’m Wendy and I’m disgusting.
I used to go to the stationery cupboard, open it and stand there just sniffing for a bit. Slightly embarrassing in an open plan office, but there you go.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Wendy, Sooz, thanks for coming. That took guts, and I want you both to know that it’s going to be OK.
Plus, I’ve got this guy in Texas who can get Mead notepads.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I love stationery. I probably have enough pens and notebooks to last me for the next 5 years, but I still can’t stop buying. When I can’t think of anything to write, I just buy supplies instead, because it feels like the next best thing.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Oh No - and I thought I was unique. Ever watch the Post-it-Note junkies checking out the latest pre-printed ones? (And in US Staples you can buy boxes of RED paper clips - and other colors. Staples here only have Mixed - anyone want 5 boxes of non-red paper-clips?)
April 26th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Ted/Dad, if we’re nailing our perversions to the mast, I’m saying Moleskine notepads and Number 2 pencils to you. Have you noticed the pleasing sound made by well-bound notepads? It’s like shutting the door on a Bentley. Also, You need to get people to pick the red ones out for you, Van Halen style.
And people, come on - don’t tell me no one got the reinforcements joke, or was that a given? I thought you would have seen the whole punchline coming.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Reinforcements are the crappest of the stationery. They are. They are fiddly and stupid and stupid and fiddly and stupid. They take ages to put on and then they just peel off. Or they tear anyway. The bastards. Only good for stationery puns, apparently.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:40 am
I can see I’m going to have to put together a rather large Care Package.
Make a list, I’ll get it together.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Reinforcements. Haven’t used them for years. And back when I did, I used them mainly for repairs, rather than in the preventative fashion intended.
April 27th, 2007 at 10:19 am
Ah, notepads. I like starting new ones - it’s Freudian. I’ve got a drawerful of deflowered pads in a drawer, none more than half full. My one luxury - the reason I never owned a Bentley - or a #2 pencil.